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Mi^miht  cBDucatfonal  iEonostapl^^ 

EDITED  BY  HENRY  SUZZALLO 

PROFESSOR   OF  THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   EDUCATION 
TEACHERS  COLLEGE,  COLUMBIA   UNIVERSITY 


DEMOCRACY'S 
HIGH  SCHOOL 

BY 

WILLIAM  D.  LEWIS 

PRINCIPAL  OF  THE   WILLIAM   PEijIT*   HIGH  SCHOOL 


HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN   COMPANY 

BOSTON,    NEW   YORK    AND   CHICAGO 


A,^.^k,S^-^r^,.^-^wfr-k.^-'^^A.»Jk.»Jk.^-A.Vl..j>A^ 


COPYRIGHT,  1914,  BY  WILLIAM  D.  LEWIS 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


The  attt£(Jr'a^noWledg^  tjie  courteous  per- 
mission of  thi  mWi5"-o7  ?'The  Outlook"  and 
*'  The  Saturday  Evening  Post "  to  reprint  arti- 
'  cl6i^  whi'di  .'have'  'ippearpcj  ip  ^tJbe .  columns  ,of 
these  periodicals.  :*•-•'     ':' 


tPit  SKbeniitie  l^rtii 

CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S   .    A 


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LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

SANTA  BARBARA 


FOREWORD 

In  February,  1913,  I  chanced  to  read  three 
articles  on  the  American  high  school  which  at 
once  impressed  me  with  their  social  insight.  I 
asked  their  author,  Principal  William  D.  Lewis, 
of  the  William  Penn  High  School,  Philadelphia, 
to  call  on  me.  His  enthusiastic  vision  of  the  im- 
mense possibilities  for  real  democratic  service  to 
be  performed  by  the  public  high  schools  of  the 
country  led  me  to  say  in  The  Outlook:  "Every- 
man and  woman  interested  in  boys  and  girls  — ■ 
and  what  man  or  woman  is  not?  —  ought  to  read 
what  Principal  Lewis  himself  says;  for  no  brief 
sketch  of  mine  will  do  even  the  remotest  justice 
to  the  way  in  which  he  grips  and  expounds  the 
vital  need  of  our  high  school  and  college  educa- 
tion —  the  need  that  it  shall  relate  to  life,  and 
shall  offer  to  each  divergent  soul  the  chance  that 
soul  needs  to  train  itself,  along  its  own  lines,  for 
useful  citizenship,  domestic  and  public,  in  this 
great  seething,  straining  democracy  of  ours." 

I  am  glad  that  in  the  present  volume  Mr.  Lewis 
has  amplified  the  articles  that  I  first  read,  and  that 


FOREWORD 

he  has  added  others  so  as  to  express  his  pedagogi- 
cal and  social  creed  more  fully.  The  vital  thing 
about  this  book  is  that  it  shows  just  where  the 
high  schools  which  the  American  people  are  sup- 
porting can  render  a  far  larger  service  than  the 
mere  inculcation  of  knowledge.  It  presents  the 
problem  of  the  school  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  boy  and  girl  rather  than  from  that  of  the  sub- 
ject, and  shows  how  completely  this  change  in 
viewpoint  transforms  our  traditional  thought  of 
the  school. 

The  fact  that  this  book  appears  in  a  series 
devoted  to  pedagogy  ought  not  to  limit  its  read- 
ers to  the  teaching  profession.  It  is  of  most  inter- 
est to  the  average  plain  citizen  who  thinks  of  the 
future,  and  who  is  anxious  that  the  activities 
through  which  the  collective  and  cooperative 
forces  of  society  find  expression  shall  give  their 
largest  possible  service. 

Our  progress  in  educational  efl&ciency  must 
come  from  two  sources:  from  the  great  natural 
leader  who  happens  to  be  an  educator,  and  from 
the  ordinary  citizen  who  to  common  sense  adds 
some  power  of  vision,  and  who  realizes  the  rela- 
tion of  the  school  to  society.  In  pedagogy  as  in 
every  other  walk  of  life  great  natural  leaders  are 
scarce.  Therefore  the  ordinary  citizen  of  vision 
vi 


FOREWORD 

and  common  sense  must  concern  himself  with  the 
changing  problem  of  the  school,  and  must  insist 
that  pedantic  tradition  does  not  keep  our  schools 
from  performing  their  full  pubHc  service.  Neither 
pedagogue  nor  citizen  can  fail  to  gain  from  Mr. 
Lewis's  discussion  a  clearer  vision  of  the  place  the 
school  must  fill  in  solving  our  great  democratic 
problems  if  these  are  to  be  solved  aright. 

Theodore  Roosevelt. 


CONTENTS 


Foreword,  by  Theodore  Roosevelt     ....     v 

Editor's  Introduction ix 

I.  A  Social  View  of  the  High  School     .    .      i 
II.  The  High  School  and  the  Boy    ....    28 

III.  The  High  School  and  the  Girl   ....    51 

IV.  The  High  School  and  the  College      .    .    80 
V.  The  Administration  OF  THE  Course  OF  Study  109 

Outline 127 


EDITOR'S  INTRODUCTION 

For  more  than  a  century  we  have  been  trying  to 
make  our  school  system  more  democratic,  which 
is  merely  to  say  that  we  have  been  striving  to 
equalize  educational  opportunity  in  America. 

At  first  the  chief  problem  lay  in  cheapening  the 
cost  of  education  to  the  individual  child.  In  the 
fulfillment  of  this  program,  schools  were  every- 
where established  so  as  to  be  ready  of  access. 
Rate  bills  for  instruction  were  abolished.  Em- 
ployers of  children  and  exploiting  parents  were 
restrained,  by  compulsory  school  attendance  acts, 
from  depriving  youth  of  its  educational  opportu- 
nity. Institutions  for  higher  training  were  also 
established  by  the  state, —  high  schools,  colleges, 
and  universities.  Thus  schools  of  every  grade 
were  made  available  to  the  poor  as  to  the  rich. 
If  one  had  the  requisite  ambition  he  could  find 
everywhere  open  public  schools.  Mental  ability 
and  economic  pressure  seemed  to  be  limiting  con- 
ditions only  beyond  the  elementary  school. 

But  it  was  soon  discovered  that  the  privilege  of 
education  was  more  apparent  than  real.  It  is  one 
thing  to  find  free  entrance  into  a  public  school 
ix 


EDITOR'S  INTRODUCTION 

and  it  is  another  to  profit  by  attendance  therein. 
The  fact  was  that  the  schools  offered  so  little  to 
some  children  that  they  were  not  even  brought 
to  school.  As  traditionally  organized,  ordinary 
school  teaching  could  not  do  much  for  the  blind, 
the  deaf-mutes,  and  the  feeble-minded.  They 
were  in  effect  left  out  of  the  scheme  of  public 
education,  though  the  boast  had  been  made  that 
there  was  a  school  open  for  every  child  in 
America.  The  struggle  has  been  to  make  the 
boast  real.  Soon,  through  special  administration 
and  special  methods  of  instruction,  these  unfortu- 
nates  really  received  an  education  in  special 
schools.  Next  the  schoolmaster  passed  to  another 
though  less  unfortunate  group  who  were  the 
incomplete  failures  of  the  public  schools  —  to  the 
backward,  the  anaemic,  the  delinquent,  the  crip- 
pled, and  the  foreign.  These,  too,  needed  some 
particular  care  that  education  might  do  for  them 
what  had  been  promised.  Special  classes  were 
organized  for  them  alongside  of  the  regular 
grades.  And  last,  the  educator's  scrutiny  came 
to  that  vast  group  which  we  had  long  called 
"average  children."  Here  the  statistics  of  school 
attendance  revealed  the  tragedies  of  school  elim- 
ination and  school  retardation.    This  great  mass 

X 


EDITOR'S  INTRODUCTION 

of  undef ective  children  proved  not  to  be  homoge. 
neous;  they  presented  a  wide  variation  in  degree 
and  type  of  mind  which  had  not  been  adequately 
taken  into  account.  These,  too,  had  to  have  some 
special  consideration.  It  was  given.  Every  ex- 
pansion of  the  courses  of  study  and  the  meth- 
ods of  teaching  in  the  regular  grade  classrooms 
is  an  attempt  to  reach  some  previously  neglected 
ability  or  interest.  The  organization  of  the  junior 
high  school  for  those  who  are  at  complete  ease  in 
the  traditional  school,  and  the  establishment  of 
pre-vocational  intermediate  schools  for  those  who 
usually  leave  school  at  the  fifth  or  sixth  school 
year,  are  simply  the  last  special  efforts  of  the 
administrator  to  fit  the  lower  reaches  of  the  school 
system  to  the  varying  needs  of  human  beings. 

The  cheapening  and  the  popularizing  of  ele- 
mentary education  have  had  one  effect  bearing 
large  consequences  for  higher  education.  They 
have  deposited  at  the  doors  of  the  high  school  a 
mass  of  boys  and  girls,  larger  in  number  and  more 
divergent  in  ability  than  any  group  it  has  ever 
handled  before.  Following  a  long-sanctified  cus- 
tom, the  high  school  immediately  proceeded  to 
pick  and  choose  those  who  would  fit  its  tradi- 
tional standards,  rejecting  all  those  whose  domi- 
xi 


EDITOR'S  INTRODUCTION 

nant  needs  it  scorned  to  serve.  But  the  pile  of 
human  beings  scrapped  by  the  high  school  be- 
came so  large  as  to  attract  attention.  The  right 
of  high  schools  to  be  so  highly  and  so  narrowly 
selective  was  questioned.  In  the  face  of  protest 
and  even  revolt,  the  high  school  had  to  change. 
Like  the  elementary  school  of  two  decades  ago,  it 
began  to  modify  the  spirit  of  its  administration, 
to  expand  its  curriculum,  and  to  change  its 
methods  of  instruction,  so  that  every  kind  of 
mind  and  every  degree  of  ability  might  find  its 
chance  for  extended  intellectual  growth  in  the 
new  opportunities  and  encouragements  of  a 
modem  and  democratic  school. 

The  nature  of  the  present-day  movement  to 
democratize  our  high  schools  may  be  best  under- 
stood by  a  consideration  of  the  typical  cases  of 
personal  and  social  failure  with  which  these  schools 
must  be  charged  and  by  a  statement  of  those 
newer  policies  which  are  designed  to  substitute 
a  broad  teaching  efficiency  for  a  narrow  academic 
tradition.  These  are  here  presented  by  the  thor- 
oughly socialized  master  of  a  great  municipal  sec- 
ondary school,  whose  experiences  and  experiments 
afford  concrete  evidence  of  the  soundness  of  his 
conception  of  a  modem  democratic  high  school. 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 
I 

A  SOCIAL  VIEW  OF  THE  HIGH  SCHOOL 

The  irrepressible  conflict  between  progress  and . 
tradition  has  at  last  reached  the  American  high  ^^ 
school.   For  years  there  has  been  a  steadily  in-  • 
creasing  dissatisfaction  with  the  results  of  a 
course  of  study  of  almost  exclusively  academic 
content  that  sent  from  the  school  as  failures 
many  of  the  pupils,  particularly  boys,  who  either 
could  not  or  would  not  apply  themselves  to  a 
curriculum  consisting  mainly  of  memorizing  text- 
books.  This  curriculum  has  failed  to  enlist  the 
interest  of  motor-minded  pupils  because  its  re- 
lation to  their  lives  was  at  best  imcertain  and 
remote.   The  imrest  of  the  boys  and  girls,  once 
attributed  to  youthful  perversity,  has   at  last 
found  a  response  in  public  sentiment. 

The  awakened  civic  consciousness  of  the  nation  & 

has  tended  to  emphasize  popular  discontent  with 

the  high  school.    In  a  half-articulate  way  the 

public  has  known  that  the  fundamental  reason 

I 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

for  the  annual  expenditure  of  approximately  a 
half-billion  of  dollars  for  schools  is  the  produc- 
tion of  a  better  citizenship  than  could  be  had 
without  that  expense.  Along  with  the  scrutiny 
of  our  other  institutions  has  come  the  insistent 
question,  "Are  our  high  schools  producing  this 
improved  citizenship?" 

Then,  too,  there  has  come  a  half-conscious 
recognition  of  the  individualistic  aim  of  the 
purely  academic  school,  and  of  its  pedagogical 
shortcomings,  as  well  as  of  its  non-social  ideals  as 
measured  by  the  new  conception  of  public  serv- 
ice. The  boy  who  remained  in  the  school  only 
a  short  time  often  carried  into  the  practical 
affairs  of  life  no  superiority  in  efficiency  over  the 
grammar  school  graduate.  Indeed,  his  year  or 
two  of  perfunctory  compliance  in  an  order  of  life 
that  never  really  gripped  him  had  frequently 
developed  a  habitual  lassitude  that  had  to  be 
overcome  by  a  series  of  convulsive  jolts  that  the 
world  of  affairs  knows  only  too  well  how  to  give. 
The  boy  who  entered  practical  life  after  complet- 
ing the  high  school  course  found  that  his  four 
years  had  given  him  little  that  was  useful,  —  not 
even  a  mastery  of  direct,  forceful  English,  — 
although  it  had  given  him  a  beclouded  haze 
of  Latin  endings,  ad-ante-con's,  and  a  jumble 

2 


A  SOCIAL  VIEW 

of  physically  impossible  German  genders.  This 
haze  rapidly  evaporated  into  thin  air  and  became 
a  part  of  the  culture  which  consists  of  the  things 
we  have  forgotten.  About  all  the  graduate  really 
had  was  a  residuum  of  "mental  discipline"  . 
which  at  its  best  functioned  in  a  habitual  per- 
sistence. On  the  other  hand,  habits  detrimental 
to  both  culture  and  discipline  were  often  formed, 
if  we  are  to  believe  Professor  Paul  Hanus,  who 
says:  "During  the  school  period  aversion  and 
evasion  are  more  frequently  cultivated  than 
power  and  skill  through  the  forced  pursuit  of 
permanently  iminteresting  subjects  —  subjects 
for  which  the  learner  has  no  capacity.  When 
that  does  not  happen,  the  pernicious  habit  of 
being  satisfied  with  inadequate  or  partial 
achievement  is  very  likely  to  be  the  result.  In 
neither  case  does  the  individual  develop  his  real 
capacity,  nor  does  he  acquire  right  habits."  ^ 

The  boy  who  went  to  college  from  the  high 
school  was  practically  always  lost  to  the  home 
community.  He  swelled  the  already  plethoric 
ranks  of  the  "learned  professions"  or  moved  to 
the  large  cities.  He  seemed  to  be  the  only  one 
the  course  of  study  really  fitted,  yet  it  was  a 
question  whether  either  he  or  the  community 
^  Educational  Aims  and  Edticational  Values,  p.  ii. 
3 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

had  profited  by  the  expensive  gift  bestowed  upon 
him. 

If  the  service  of  the  school  to  the  boys  was 
vague  and  uncertain,  its  practical  value  to  the 
great  mass  of  girls  approached  absolute  zero.  It 
has  long  been  evident  that  the  girl  who  is  gradu- 
ated from  the  traditional  high  school  is  neither 
better  fitted  thereby  for  the  duties  of  a  wife, 
home-maker,  and  mother,  nor  efficiently  trained 
to  meet  the  practical  problem  of  self-support. 
Society,  therefore,  is  beginning  to  see  that  her 
education  is  very  often  a  mistake  both  for 
itself  and  for  the  girl. 

The  recognition  of  the  shortcomings  of  our 
individualistic  social  philosophy  has  made  many 
people  look  at  our  schools  from  an  entirely  new 
point  of  view.  Within  the  last  few  years  our 
national  life  has  become  excessively  complicated. 
The  cost  of  living  has  perhaps  nearly  doubled. 
Enormous  aggregations  of  capital  have  practi- 
cally assumed  the  functions  of  government 
through  their  alliance  with  political  systems. 
Justice  against  "malefactors  of  great  wealth" 
has  become  increasingly  difficult  to  secure  because 
of  their  command  of  the  best  legal  talent,  the 
emphasis  of  our  jurisprudence  upon  property 
rights,  and  the  extreme  technicality  of  American 

4 


A  SOCIAL  VIEW 

legal  procedure.  Class  lines  have  become  more 
and  more  closely  drawn,  with  property  rather 
than  birth  as  the  mark  of  distinction.  For  these 
and  many  other  similar  reasons  the  American 
people  —  rarely  the  American  pedagogues  — 
have  begun  to  see  that  the  task  of  the  one  com- 
pletely socialized  agency  for  human  betterment 
is  not  to  give  the  brilliant  John  and  Henry 
advantages  over  the  phlegmatic  James  and  Tom, 
but  to  give  to  each  the  type  of  training  most 
likely  to  enable  him  to  become  the  most  intelli- 
gent, conscientious,  and  efficient  citizen  possible 
with  his  mental  and  physical  endowments  and 
limitations.  The  community  —  big  and  little  — 
has  become  wisely  selfish  in  recognizing  in  its 
schools  not  a  philanthropy  but  a  cooperative 
agency  for  social  service. 

It  is  a  platitude  that  young  people  get  their 
adjustment  to  the  social  order  during  the  period 
of  adolescence,  which  coincides  roughly  with  the 
high  school  years.  During  this  time  they  awaken 
to  new  interests  and  assume  new  responsibilities, 
change  again  and  again  their  point  of  view,  form 
their  life  purposes,  formulate  their  standards  for 
judging  people  and  institutions,  establish  their 
ideals,  and  determine  their  various  personalities 
by  the  thoughts  that  man  thinketh  in  his  heart. 

5 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

During  these  years,  then,  will  be  decided  their 
attitude  toward  society.  If  they  emerge  from 
the  high  school  with  an  indifferent,  selfish,  laissez- 
faire  philosophy,  they  will  become  either  the 
unthinking  victims  or  the  plunderers  of  our  devil- 
take-the-hindmost  social  order. 

Evidently  there  are  two  ways  in  which  the 
boys  and  girls  in  the  high  schools  can  be  trained 
in  citizenship  and  in  right  social  thinking  — 
first,  through  the  curriculum,  and  second, 
through  participation  in  the  organization  and 
management  of  the  school  as  a  social  unit. 

The  school  can  contribute  to  the  intelligence  of 
its  rising  citizenship  by  drawing  directly  upon 
that  large  fund  of  present-day  social,  political, 
and  economic  knowledge  that  has  made  the  low- 
priced  magazine  the  tremendous  power  it  has 
become  in  our  national  life  within  the  last  fifteen 
years.  Underlying  the  lurid  exaggerations  of  the 
muckraker  there  has  been  a  foundation  of  fact 
without  which  his  attacks  would  have  been  of 
interest  mainly  to  the  courts  that  railroaded  him 
to  prison. 

That  it  may  contribute  to  real  civic  intelligence 
the  school,  away  down  in  the  elementary  grades, 
should  begin  to  teach  the  nature  of  the  coopera- 
tive functions  of  society.  For  example,  the  pupils 
6 


A  SOCIAL  VIEW 

should  leam  in  a  simple  way  the  functions  of  the 
policeman,  the  fireman,  the  street-cleaner.  They 
should  understand  that  the  streets  belong  to  the 
people  and  that  they  are  loaned  in  part  to  transit 
companies,  and  to  telegraph,  telephone,  lighting, 
and  water  companies.  They  should  see  the  public 
nature  of  these  corporations;  should  know  that 
in  many  communities  these  functions  are  exer- 
cised directly  by  the  people  as  represented  by 
their  government.  As  they  come  into  the  ad- 
vanced grades  of  the  grammar  school,  they 
should  leam  about  the  abuses  against  which  the 
people  must  defend  their  own  interests.  The 
alliance  between  corrupt  public  officials  and 
public-service  corporations  should  be  shown  up 
as  a  conspiracy  against  public  welfare  that 
affects  directly  the  comfort  and  prosperity  of 
every  citizen. 

All  study  of  civics,  history,  and  other  forms  of 
social  science  should  clarify  the  pupils'  under- 
standing of  the  social  forces  and  problems  of  his 
immediate  environment.  For  example,  civics, 
instead  of  studying  governmental  organization 
beginning  with  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States,  should  begin  with  community  functions 
in  District  Number  Ten  or  the  Nineteenth  Ward. 
The  constitution  is  complicated,  abstract,  remote, 

7 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

uninteresting.  The  community  functions  of  the 
neighborhood,  village,  ward,  and  city  are  con- 
crete, simple,  immediate,  and  personal.  They 
explain  a  thousand  experiences  that  have  been 
unintelligible  and  furnish  the  pupil  a  point  of 
contact  with  the  conversation  of  his  elders,  the 
comments  of  the  newspapers,  and  the  discussions 
in  the  magazines.  Moreover,  this  approach  to 
the  study  of  civics  leads  immediately  and  inevi- 
tably to  the  larger  social  problems  with  which  the 
citizen  must  be  familiar  if  he  is  to  be  a  helpful 
and  useful  community  asset. 

From  this  type  of  instruction  it  is  a  simple  step 
to  an  understanding  of  the  great  national  ques- 
tions that  are  claiming  the  serious  thought  of 
every  patriot.  The  trusts,  the  bosses,  —  big  and 
little,  —  the  control  of  legislation  through  caucus 
rule,  and  the  influence  upon  the  big  leaders  by 
the  "interests,"  capital  and  labor,  social  legis- 
lation, lobbies,  —  legitimate  and  otherwise,  — 
aU  of  these  and  himdreds  of  other  questions  are 
vital  to  the  civilization  we  are  building.  Our 
young  people  must  understand  this,  because 
under  a  despotism  the  government  may  be 
better  than  the  sum  total  of  the  citizenship, 
while  under  a  democracy  the  government  may  be 
worse  but  can  never  be  better.  This  is  the  fun- 
8 


A  SOCIAL  VIEW 

damental  reason  for  our  expensive  public  school 
system. 

All  around  us  are  concrete  problems  whose 
study  cannot  fail  to  promote  the  right  attitude 
of  mind  on  the  part  of  the  pupils.  To  cite  a  few 
examples,  our  boys  and  girls  in  the  high  schools 
could  with  great  interest  and  profit  study  the 
housing  conditions  in  the  poorer  parts  of  the  city, 
the  effects  of  Jiild  labor,  family  budgets  for 
various  incomes.  They  could  in  a  more  or  less 
anonymous  way  analyze  their  own  family  ex- 
penses and  the  cost  and  profit  elements  of  com- 
modity prices,  and  their  periodic  advances,  such 
as  the  recent  twenty-five  cents  a  ton  on  coal  and 
last  week's  two  cents  a  pound  on  meat.  They 
could  learn  to  use  the  tables  of  the  reports  of  the 
Census  Bureau  and  of  the  various  departments 
of  the  Government.  They  could  vitalize  their 
physiology  and  hygiene  by  the  examination  of 
bakeshops,  markets,  restaurants,  and  hotels. 
They  could  profitably  as  young  citizens  acquaint 
themselves  with  the  actual  problems  of  local 
government.  The  peering  eyes  of  a  few  thousand 
high-school-boy  investigators  from  all  classes  of 
the  community  might  often  discover  the  snake- 
trails  of  public  dishonesty.  But  the  prevention  of 
graft  would  be  only  a  by-product.  The  social 
9 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

thinking  and  the  standards  of  community  right- 
eousness would  be  tremendously  improved,  not 
only  in  the  future  voters  in  school,  but  also  in 
their  parents  and  older  associates. 

Nor  would  the  aroused  pubKc  spirit  of  youth 
fail  in  its  interest  in  national  affairs.  Their 
debating  clubs  would  echo  a  real  interest  in  the 
problems  of  control  or  ownership  of  natural  mo- 
nopolies. Problems  like  the  tariff,  "pork-barrel" 
appropriations,  pension  frauds,  conservation, 
irrigation,  woman  suffrage,  initiative,  referen- 
dum,  and  recall  will  be  the  more  readily  under- 
stood by  those  who  have  become  accustomed  to 
think  in  terms  of  community  welfare  as  applied  to 
their  immediate  environment;  and  the  spirit  of 
patriotic  devotion  to  the  public  service  that  is 
being  evidenced  by  the  present  aggressive  fight 
for  righteous  government  will  awaken  enthusi- 
astic response  from  them  because  of  their  knowl- 
edge of  conditions. 

No  less  valuable  for  training  in  citizenship 
than  this  study  of  present-day  civic,  social,  and 
economic  life  is  the  study  of  history  from  the 
modern  social  point  of  view.  Here  again,  how- 
ever, there  must  come  a  revolution  in  our  tradi- 
tional method.  Go  into  a  history  class  in  almost 
any  high  school  and  what  do  you  find?  Ancient 

10 


A  SOCIAL  VIEW 

history  —  fact  after  fact  painfully  recited  from 
a  book;  hear  pupils  parrot  off  details  about 
cuneiform  writing,  Egyptian  hieroglyphics,  the 
wars  of  the  Assyrians,  Chaldeans,  Persians,  the 
struggles  between  Athens,  Sparta,  and  Thebes, 
the  organization  of  the  Roman  State,  —  the 
comitia  curiata,  the  comitia  centuriata  ;  see  their 
diagrams  of  a  Roman  camp,  and  listen  to  their 
minute  description  of  the  Greek  phalanx  and  the 
Roman  legion;  follow  the  details  of  the  Punic 
wars;  listen  to  the  facts  about  Rome's  far-flung 
dominion,  the  fact  of  its  internecine  strife,  the 
fact  of  its  change  to  an  empire,  the  fact  of  its  fall 
before  the  Goths  and  Vandals.  In  all  this  you 
will  listen  in  vain  for  a  single  word  of  application 
of  these  multitudinous  facts  to  conditions  of 
to-day;  you  will  hear  none  of  the  obvious  paral- 
lelism between  the  causes  that  overthrew  the 
Roman  State  and  those  that  threaten  the  integ- 
rity of  our  own  institutions.  Here  are  a  few 
examples  of  the  applications  that  could  be  made. 
In  the  last  two  centuries  of  the  Roman  Empire 
the  population  gathered  rapidly  into  cities,  huge 
accumulations  of  wealth  promoted  class  distinc- 
tions and  hatred  between  rich  and  poor,  mar- 
riages became  relatively  fewer  and  the  birth-rate 
rapidly  declined,  the  land  came  into  the  hands  of 
II 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

large  proprietors,  and  the  former  landowners 
either  became  serfs  or  moved  to  the  cities;  in  the 
cities  independent  business  was  largely  monopo- 
lized by  the  very  wealthy,  who  hired  the  former 
small  merchants.  Divorce  became  easy,  religion 
lost  its  compelling  power,  morals  were  corrupted. 
Does  this  sound  like  a  summary  from  a  muck- 
raking magazine?  At  least  we  may  congratulate 
the  Romans  who  fell  before  the  rude  invaders  of 
the  German  forests  that  they  did  not  have  the 
abuses  of  stock-gambling,  the  coal  trust,  the  food 
trust,  or  the  tariflF,  juggled  back  and  forth  by 
partisan  politics  and  local  interests. 

Suppose,  now,  we  come  at  our  Roman  history 
from  the  modem  viewpoint.  Shall  we  not  see  in 
the  Gracchi  the  sturdy  fighters  for  the  people's 
rights  in  our  public  life  to-day?  Shall  we  not 
recognize  in  Julius  Caesar  the  most  consummate, 
even  if  the  most  patriotic  of  bosses?  Shall  we 
not  discover  in  the  agrarian  troubles  the  twen- 
tieth-century fight  for  public  control  of  natural 
monopolies?  May  we  not  hope  to  see  our  servile 
wars  fought  and  won  with  the  ballot,  and  a  gov- 
ernment for  and  by  the  people  emerge  instead 
of  the  rule  of  a  Nero  of  high  finance  or  a  riot  of 
demagogic  confiscation  and  proscription? 

Shall  we  study  history  for  history's  sake  or  for 

12 


A  SOCIAL  VIEW 

our  own  sake  —  for  the  sake  of  our  social  and 

economic  welfare?  History  is  no  museum  of 
antiquities.  It  is  a  storehouse  of  political  wisdom 
for  him  who  wiU  take  the  trouble  to  understand. 
Every  boy  and  girl  in  our  schools  can  be  made  to 
interpret  the  past  in  terms  of  the  present  and 
the  present  in  terms  of  the  past  and  to  take  an 
intense  delight  in  the  process  as  soon  as  our 
schools  really  discover  why  they  should  teach 
history.  The  aim  of  our  whole  history-and- 
politics  group  of  studies  should  be  to  put  an 
enacting  clause  into  our  present  complacent 
assimiption  that  the  American  voter  knows 
something  about  the  vital  issues  that  he  is  called 
upon  to  determine  with  his  ballot. 

The  high  school  can  hasten  the  process  of 
social  thinking  in  other  ways,  however.  Its 
institutional  democracy  can  become  a  habit  of 
life  in  the  youths  who  are  just  forming  their  life 
habits.  To  this  end  it  must  first  abolish  every 
kind  of  snobbish  society  and  fraternity.  Here  is 
a  case  that  is  tj^ical  of  their  working. 

Mazie  was  the  daughter  of  a  mill  foreman  who 
had  the  American  faith  in  an  education.  This 
faith,  we  ought  to  observe,  was  pretty  much  all 
based  on  a  blind  belief  that  somehow  an  educa- 
tion would  enable  his  girl  to  have  an  easier  time 

13 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

than  had  fallen  to  the  lot  of  her  father  and 
mother.  He  loved  Mazie  and  was  glad  to  sacrifice 
for  her.  The  girl  entered  the  high  school,  and  at 
first  was  dazed  and  then  charmed  by  the  fine 
equipment,  the  systematic  organization,  the  new 
studies,  and  the  crowds  of  strangers  all  intent 
upon  a  variety  of  interests  novel  to  her.  After 
a  month  or  two,  however,  Mazie  began  to  be 
aware  that  she  was  not  "in  it."  Friends  of  the 
grammar-school  days  dropped  her.  New  ac- 
quaintances suddenly  became  absorbed  in  other 
friends.  She  heard  rumors  of  secret  societies  and 
fraternities  and  saw  former  companions  wearing 
the  mystic  badges.  When  she  made  advances  to 
these  girls  she  was  repelled  with  those  sly,  covert, 
cattish  jabs  by  which  the  daughters  of  Eve  time 
out  of  mind  have  vented  their  disapproval. 
Mazie  did  not  tell  even  her  mother  why  she  left 
school;  but  her  soul  was  scarred  and  hardened, 
and  she  was  not  helped  along  the  road  toward 
culture.  Were  the  members  of  the  societies  and 
fraternities? 

Mazie's  experience  illustrates  the  social  train- 
ing of  the  wrong  kind  that  is  going  on  in  thou- 
sands of  American  high  schools.  The  school 
fraternity  and  many  of  the  exclusive  literary 
societies  are  efficient  schools  of  snobbery.  Often 

.14 


A  SOCIAL  VIEW 

they  are  worse.  A  certain  fraternity  in  one  high 
school  was  an  example  only  a  little  worse  in 
degree  than  hundreds  of  chapters  all  over  the 
country.  By  confession  of  its  members  gambling, 
drunkenness,  and  even  worse  evils  were  incidental 
to  the  free  access  to  private  rooms  by  a  group 
of  boys  too  young  to  exercise  proper  self-control. 
When  a  boy  began  to  show  an  indifferent  attitude 
toward  his  work  and  an  insolent  arrogance  toward 
authority,  the  teachers  of  that  school  always  knew 
that  he  was  being  "rushed"  by  this  fraternity. 

The  worst  feature  of  the  high  school  "frat"  is 
the  rooms.  At  best  they  become  loafing-places 
and  schools  of  cards  and  smoking.  At  worst  they 
become  schools  of  vice  as  dangerous  as  Fagin's. 
Here  the  ex-member  who  has  time  to  loaf  has 
an  opportunity  to  teach  to  yoimger  boys  the  evils 
that  his  leisure  has  learned.  Freed  as  these  rooms 
are  from  all  effectual  supervision,  even  if  parents 
or  teachers  are  invited  to  come,  they  foster  snob- 
bishness, loafing,  and  insubordination,  if  not 
gambling,  drunkenness,  and  licentiousness. 

Then  the  high  school  in  its  organization  and 
discipline  can  teach  the  necessity  of  social  think- 
ing by  means  of  the  common  interests  of  the 
school.  Athletics,  school  publications,  the  lunch- 
room, and,  in  skillful  hands,  a  large  share  of  the 

15 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

school  discipline  can  be  made  daily  object- 
lessons  in  social  cooperation.  Formal  plans,  such 
as  the  school  city,  have  often  failed  in  high  schools 
because  they  were  substituted  ex  cathedra  for  the 
benevolent  despotisms  almost  universal  in  school 
management.  The  history  of  such  experiments 
often  bears  a  close  analogy  to  that  of  the  Central 
American  republics.  But  the  valuable  part  of 
any  such  plan  is  the  spirit  of  democracy  and  social 
cooperation  at  its  basis;  and  this  can  be  secured 
gradually,  either  with  or  without  any  formal 
organization. 

Even  the  ex-cathedra  type  of  social  cooperation 
will  work  if  the  principal  and  the  faculty  of  the 
school  enjoy  the  confidence  of  the  student  body. 
Recently  the  school  board  of  an  Eastern  city 
decreed,  without  consulting  the  principal,  that 
the  study  rooms  of  the  high  school  should  be 
placed  on  a  self-governing  basis,  and  that  all 
teachers  should  be  withdrawn  the  following 
Monday.  For  a  few  days  chaos  reigned.  Then 
the  principal  placed  the  problem  fairly  before 
the  pupils.  "There  are  to  be  no  teachers  in  the 
study  halls,"  said  he.  "Some  of  you  want  to  do 
your  work:  you  will  have  to  see  that  disturbances 
cease."  They  ceased,  and  the  pupils  incidentally 
learned  a  valuable  lesson  in  social  cooperation. 
i6 


A  SOCIAL  VIEW 

In  a  certain  high  school  the  athletics  and  the 
school  paper  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  a  gang 
of  grafters  who  were  following  Tammany  meth- 
ods of  political  bossism  for  individual  profit. 
The  principal  got  the  facts  and  showed  up  the 
whole  practice  to  the  school.  A  new  organization 
was  effected,  and  money  that  had  formerly  gone 
for  graft  was  put  into  decorations  for  the  building. 
In  a  couple  of  years  over  twelve  hundred  dollars 
were  thus  spent. 

In  another  school  a  reception  was  given  to  the 
wife  of  the  Governor  of  the  State.  Nimierous 
pageants,  pantomimes,  and  allegories  were  given, 
every  one  of  them  originated,  costumed,  and 
executed  by  the  pupils,  with  only  advisory  aid 
from  the  faculty.  In  another  a  May  fete,  con- 
sisting of  songs,  drills,  dances,  pageants,  and 
scenes  from  plays,  was  carried  on  almost  wholly 
by  student  initiative  and  administration.  In  this 
school  there  are  twenty  clubs,  including  current- 
events,  social-service,  dramatic,  camera,  student- 
welfare,  lend-a-hand,  besides  those  devoted  to  the 
various  subjects  of  study.  All  these  various  activ- 
ities, from  the  quelling  of  the  disorder  in  the  study 
rooms  in  the  first  school  to  the  democratic  clubs 
last  mentioned,  have  been  carried  on  by  the  pupils 
—  often  in  response  to  faculty  suggestion,  to  be 

17 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

sure,  but  always  with  a  rich  result  in  practical 
community  cooperation.  Illustrations  might  be 
indefinitely  multiplied  from  the  best  schools  in 
the  country.  It  is  notable  that  wherever  these 
activities  are  strong  the  problem  of  discipline 
practically  disappears.  The  pity  is  that  such 
activities  are  not  generally  recognized  for  their 
direct  value  for  training  in  citizenship,  and  en- 
couraged as  an  essential  part  of  the  school  life.  If 
the  schools  exist  for  the  purpose  of  producing  a 
better  citizenship,  why  should  they  not  become 
laboratories  of  citizenship  where  the  problems  of 
the  school  community  are  solved?  At  the  basis  of 
these  problems  lie  the  same  principles  as  are  fun- 
damental in  the  problems  of  the  Town,  City, 
State,  and  Nation. 

At  the  high  school  age  the  pupils  are  coming 
into  full  realization  of  their  social  instincts.  It 
is  strange  that  we  have  been  managing  our  high 
schools  as  if  our  pupils  were  to  be  citizens  of  a 
despotism  where  the  highest  virtue  is  unthinking 
obedience.  This  habit  of  rendering  unthinking 
obedience  to  a  government,  no  matter  how  bene- 
ficent, is  exactly  the  habit  most  favorable  to  the 
party  boss.  The  habit  of  loyalty  to  a  fraternity 
or  a  society,  even  if  its  interests  are  contrary  to 
those  of  the  school,  is  a  good  foundation  for  loy- 
i8 


A  SOCIAL  VIEW 

alty  to  a  political  party,  even  if  it  becomes  the 
tool  of  special  interests  working  for  public  de- 
moralization. Is  it  not  clear,  then,  that  one  of 
the  first  duties  of  the  public  school  is  to  make  its 
charges  intelligent  concerning  these  questions 
that  most  vitally  concern  our  community  wel- 
fare? And  is  it  not  also  clear  that  they  should 
learn  to  apply  the  knowledge  of  cooperative 
social  betterment  imperatively  demanded  for 
their  daily  lives? 

If  our  high  schools  are  to  teach  these  political, 
social,  and  economic  truths,  there  must  be  a 
revolution  in  the  program  of  studies  and  in  the 
point  of  view  from  which  every  subject  is  ap- 
proached. The  tradition  that  every  pupil  enter- 
ing the  high  school  shall  study  algebra  and  a  for- 
eign language  must  give  way  to  the  larger  public 
concern  that  every  pupil  must  become  intelligent 
concerning  the  facts  of  present-day  life.  Instead 
of  insisting  upon  the  deepening  of  our  academic 
ruts,  the  school  must  stimulate  the  public  intelli- 
gence, inculcate  aggressive  public  righteousness, 
and  exalt  conscientious  public  service.  Then  it 
must  ojBFer  a  sufficient  diversity  of  opportunity  to 
permit  intelligent  choice  in  the  lines  of  general 
preparation  for  the  numerous  vocations  toward 
which  widely  differing  individuals  are  drawn, 

19 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

including,  of  course,  the  professions  for  which 
alone  our  present  course  offers  adequate  prepara- 
tion. 

This  diversity  of  opportunity  will  serve  the 
public  welfare  because  it  will  lead  to  the  various 
types  of  trained  service  the  public  needs.  The 
manager  of  a  department  store  could  not  use 
advantageously  a  force  of  which  seventy-five  per 
cent  were  window-trimmers.  In  simple  fairness 
a  truly  democratic  school  must  open  its  doors  of 
opportunity  as  wide  to  the  future  artisan,  artist, 
merchant,  and  farmer  as  it  does  to  the  future 
doctor,  lawyer,  preacher,  and  teacher.  But  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  public  the  chief  reason 
for  this  extended  opportunity  is  the  imperative 
need  of  the  community  for  trained  men  in  every 
line  of  activity.  At  present  thousands  of  men 
whom  the  Lord  intended  to  follow  plows  and 
•  drive  nails  are  gouging  each  other  and  mulcting 
the  public  in  the  shabby-genteel  crush  after 
patients,  clients,  and  congregations.  Pills  and 
red  tape  are  dispensed  every-where,  but  you  must 
"bespeak  a  fortnight  before"  the  man  who  can 
plant  the  garden  or  repair  the  storm  windows. 
This  is  because  our  educational  train  has  been 
through-scheduled  for  the  professions,  and  the 
thousands  who  foimd  that  they  did  not  care  to 

20 


A  SOCIAL  VIEW 

reach  this  destination  have  been  bowled  off  like 
mail  sacks  wherever  it  happened,  instead  of  being 
comfortably  landed  where  they  ought  to  have 
gone. 

It  would  be  easy  to  suggest  lines  of  school 
activity  in  the  interest  of  this  larger  return  to 
the  community  by  enumerating  a  dozen  kinds  of 
trained  service  urgently  needed.  Specifically, 
however,  a  better  answer  can  be  had  by  a  study 
of  some  phases  of  our  decennial  stock-taking  in 
the  Thirteenth  Census.  Such  studies  will  reach 
widely  different  conclusions  for  different  com- 
munities and  will  indicate  a  wholesome  local 
variation  in  the  educational  program.  The  fol- 
lowing facts  furnish  conclusive  proof,  for  example, 
that  one  line  of  educated  service  is  greatly  needed, 
and  point  the  way  to  a  revision  of  the  high- 
school  curriculum  in  many  localities  that  could 
not  fail  to  be  salutary. 

The  report  of  the  Census  of  1910  says:  "It  is 
a  significant  fact  that  between  1900  and  19 10  the  , 
urban  population  increased  34.8  per  cent  and  the 
rural  population  only  11.2  per  cent."  The  total 
farm  acreage,  on  the  other  hand,  increased  only 
4.8  per  cent.  The  report  for  all  of  the  cereal 
products  of  the  farm  shows  an  increase  in  acreage 
of  3.5  per  cent,  in  quantity  produced  1.7  per 
21 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

cent,  and  in  value  79.8  per  cent.  Less  than 
2  per  cent  increase  in  quantity  brought  nearly 
80  per  cent  increase  in  cost. 

Who  paid  this  80  per  cent? 

We  all  did.  Why  did  not  some  part  of  this 
80  per  cent  find  its  way  into  our  individual 
pockets  —  yours  and  mine?  Possibly  because  we 
were  a  part  of  the  34.8  per  cent  that  had  moved 
into  the  city.  There  are  many  causes  for  the 
increased  cost  of  living.  This  is  one  of  them. 

How  could  the  high  schools  improve  this  con- 
dition? They  could  teach  the  knowledge  gained 
by  the  Department  of  Agriculture,  which  has 
shown  in  hundreds  of  cases  all  over  the  country 
an  increase  of  from  25  to  100  per  cent  in  crops 
raised  under  the  scientific  direction  of  its  experts. 
There  is  ample  room  for  this  improvement,  as 
witness  the  comparison  of  average  crops  to  an 
acre  in  three  staples  raised  by  the  United  States 
and  Germany:  — 


Wheat 

Bushels 

Oats 
Bushels 

Potatoes 
Bushels 

United  States 
Germany 

14 
29.8 

29.4 

92.7 
200.8 

Germany  is  producing  about  twice  as  much  to 

the  acre  as  America  —  not  because  she  has  better 

land  but  because  she  employs  better  methods. 

Our  scientific  agriculturists  know  these  methods 

22 


A  SOCIAL  VIEW 

and  we  —  the  people  —  own  the  schools  where 
these  methods  can  be  taught  to  our  boys,  who 
are  the  pupils. 

Are  we  teaching  the  things  our  boys  and  girls 
need  to  know  to  become  intelligent  producers 
from  the  land?  Here  is  an  extract  from  the  analy- 
sis of  the  subjects  studied  in  8097  high  schools,  as 
published  in  the  report  of  the  United  States 
Commissioner  of  Education :  — 

Percentage 

Latin,  French  and  German 82.64 

Algebra  and  geometry 87.72 

Agriculture 4.66 

Domestic  economy 3.78 

If  the  Department  of  Agriculture  can  secure  a 
gain  of  from  25  to  100  per  cent  in  crops  managed 
under  its  direction;  if  we  have  too  few  people  in 
the  country  and  too  many  in  the  city;  if  we  are 
all  suffering  from  high  prices  at  least  partly 
because  of  insufficient  production  from  the  land; 
and  if  the  instruction  in  agriculture  in  our  own 
high  schools  will  tend  to  keep  our  boys  and  girls 
on  the  farms  where  we  know  the  majority  will  be 
infinitely  better  off,  and  at  the  same  time  furnish 
us  more  food  because  they  have  learned  improved 
methods  of  agriculture,  —  is  it  not  pretty  clear 
that  we  need  a  revolution  in  our  high  school 
curriculum? 

23 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

The  fact  that  the  high  schools  are  so  exclu- 
sively bookish  and  academic,  that  they  are  prac- 
tically coUege  preparatory  schools,  keeps  thou- 
sands of  pupils  every  year  from  crossing  their 
thresholds;  but  let  us  look  at  the  results  to  those 
who  actually  enter.  Statistics  of  the  United 
States  Bureau  of  Education  show  that  40.94  per 
cent  of  the  pupils  inii,277  high  schools  are  in  the 
first  year;  26.94  per  cent  in  the  second;  18.63  P^^ 
cent  in  the  third;  and  that  13.49  per  cent  are  in 
the  fourth.  To  be  sure,  the  schools  are  not  alto- 
gether responsible  for  this  loss;  but  let  us  see  if 
their  procedure  throws  any  Hght  on  these  appal- 
ling vital  statistics.  The  high  schools  of  the  State 
of  New  York  are  under  the  most  complete  super- 
vision and  the  most  thorough  organization  of  any 
in  the  United  States.  Some  notorious  defects 
found  elsewhere  would  be  impossible  there.  The 
course  is  fairly  representative  of  conditions  in 
the  States  of  the  North  and  East.  The  standard 
of  passing  is  low — only  60  per  cent.  For  the 
most  part,  however,  the  purely  academic  nature 
of  the  curriculum  still  persists  to  such  an  extent 
that  of  aU  pupils  taking  the  regents'  examinations 
in  January  and  June,  1913,  only  71.2  per  cent 
succeeded  in  passing.  Evidently,  a  pupil  whose 
interest  cannot  be  engaged  in  the  phonographic 
24 


A  SOCIAL  VIEW 

reproduction  of  a  textbook  would  be  wise  to  com- 
mit some  crime  that  would  take  him  to  an  in- 
stitution for  delinquents  where  he  could  secure 
the  education  and  training  he  needs. 

Is  it  not  possible  that,  from  the  point  of  view 
of  every  boy  and  girl,  our  present  courses  have 
assumed  purely  intellectual  interests  that  often 
do  not  exist?  Can  we  not,  by  offering  broader 
opportunities,  meet  the  life  needs  of  very  many 
of  the  87  per  cent  who  now  fail  of  graduation? 
Can  we  not  build  a  broader  foundation  for  com- 
munity service  and  for  the  personal  happiness  of 
the  many  pupils  who  are  now  lost  to  us  by  the 
end  of  the  first  year? 

Why  does  practically  every  first-year  pupil 
take  algebra  and  a  foreign  language?  Why  do 
any  in  the  early  part  of  the  course  take  ancient 
history,  a  subject  for  which  they  have  absolutely 
no  apperceptive  basis  and  which  at  best  can  be 
only  a  parrot  recital  of  unintelligible  facts?  Why 
does  their  English  course  cover  hterature  that  is 
mostly  away  beyond  their  comprehension,  and 
employ  methods  that  produce  a  positive  dislike 
for  the  great  things  in  literature?  Why  is  their 
science  almost  entirely  dissociated  from  their 
everyday  life?  Because  the  course  of  study,  the 
methods  of  teaching,  and  the  syllabi  are  dictated 

25 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

by  the  colleges.  Let  me  emphasize  it  again.  Prac- 
tically all  of  the  boys  and  girls  in  the  school  are 
forced  to  take  subjects  taught  on  these  exclu- 
sively college  preparatory  lines  because  every 
subject  in  the  majority  of  high  schools  is  taught 
that  way!  Yet  over  90  per  cent  of  the  pupils 
will  never  go  to  college! 

The  American  people  have  committed  them- 
selves to  a  scheme  of  universal  democratic  edu- 
cation. They  have  undertaken  this  task,  not  as 
a  philanthropy,  but  as  a  means  of  preserving  and 
perfecting  their  democratic  institutions.  They 
have  no  concern  for  academic  traditions  evolved 
from  a  scheme  of  education  aimed  to  serve  an 
aristocratic  or  leisure  class.  They  care  about  the 
social  thinking  of  the  rising  generation,  about 
their  standards  of  civic  righteousness,  about 
their  eflSciency  in  government  —  in  doing  to- 
gether the  things  that  all  the  people  must  do 
together.  As  communities  they  care  that  the 
schools  turn  out  a  product  that  can  render  the 
economic  service  that  the  community  needs; 
and  as  individuals  they  care  a  great  deal  about 
their  boys  and  girls.  All  the  boys  and  girls  should 
be  educated.  Those  who  need  the  classics  and 
the  higher  mathematics  should  have  these  sub- 
jects; but  the  doors  of  the  schools  supported  by 
26 


A  SOCIAL  VIEW 

all  the  people  should  not  be  slammed  in  the  faces 
of  those  of  the  people's  children  who  care  nothing 
about  the  classics  and  the  higher  mathematics. 
What  is  most  important  of  all  is  that  the  present 
criticism  and  unrest  in  education,  as  in  all  other 
lines  of  social  activity,  shall  not  subside  until 
reasonable  public  demands  are  adequately  met. 


II 

THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  BOY 

The  school  loafer  is  a  deplorably  ubiquitous  fact 
in  practically  every  high  school  of  the  purely 
academic  type.  He  is  proof  against  all  pedagogi- 
cal pleas  and  threats  and  cajolings,  he  is  the 
despair  of  his  parents,  and  the  shining  example 
of  failure  featured  in  every  argument  against  the 
American  high  school.  The  only  lesson  he  is 
learning  thoroughly  is  how  to  evade  all  useful 
work.  He  speedily  comes  to  accept  himself  as  a 
failure,  and  toward  him  the  habitual  attitude  of 
mind  of  the  traditional  schoolmaster  is  that  he 
should  be  shoved  out  of  the  school  as  quickly  as 
possible. 

Undoubtedly  this  is  the  wisest  course  if  the 
school  cannot  fasten  his  interests  and  enlist  his 
efforts.  The  trouble  is,  however,  that  the  school 
is  quite  as  much  to  blame  as  the  boy,  and  that  it 
is  in  effect  denying  all  educational  opportunity 
to  many  boys  of  the  best  possibilities  simply 
because  it  is  exalting  certain  schoolmasterish 
notions  of  absolute  values  above  the  recognition 
28 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  BOY 

of  its  real  social  problem  which  would  surely  be 
revealed  by  a  scientific  study  of  the  function  and 
duty  of  the  public  high  school. 

There  is  no  real  antagonism  between  the  vari- 
ous forms  of  education  urged  by  the  most  pro- 
gressive advocates  of  a  broader  course  of  study 
and  the  content  of  our  present  curriculum  except 
the  exclusiveness  of  the  latter.  Even  the  most 
radical  of  the  progressives  will  join  in  honoring 
the  classics  and  the  scheme  of  education  for 
which  they  stand.  He  will  honor  the  "dead" 
languages,  crystallized  into  everlasting  life  by 
the  immortal  bards  and  philosophers  at  whose 
feet  all  succeeding  ages  have  been  enlightened. 
From  these  languages  our  seers  have  learned  their 
own;  from  them  they  have  absorbed  the  world- 
stories  that  all  modem  literatures  have  repeated 
in  endless  variation.  The  race  has  needed  and 
still  needs  this  type  of  education;  but  the  revolu- 
tionized social  and  industrial  conditions  of  to- 
day are  forcing  upon  us  a  new  type  of  education 
equally  necessary.  Hence  the  arraignment  of  our 
high  schools  by  such  eminent  men  as  Mr.  James 
J.  Hill  and  the  constant  attacks  from  the  pulpit, 
the  platform,  and  the  press. 
I  The  problems  of  the  two  types  of  education 
might  be  summarized  as  follows:  — 
29 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

The  Old  School  served —  The  New  School  serves  — 

A  few  boys  destined  for  the  profes-  All  sorts  of  boys  destined  for  every 

sions.  occupation. 

Boys  made  resourceful  and  indus-  City  boys,  who  have  never  been  re- 

trious  by  farm  work.  sponsible  for  a  single  task. 

Socially  and  mentally  homogeneous  Sons  of  every  nation  under  heaven, 

sons  of  American  parents.  as  heterogeneous  as  an  election- 
day  crowd. 

A   few   thousand   boys   zealous   for  A  great  many  thousand  boys,  mostly 

learning  in  preparation  for  a  defi-  unambitious  and  purpjoseless. 

nite  life  purpose. 

A  simple  social  order,  with  few  occu-  A  highly  complex  social  order,  with 

pations  and  few  problems.  innumerable  activities  and  inter- 

dependent  problems. 

In  spite  of  this  contrast  the  academic  high 
school  of  to-day  is  largely  the  old  school.  It  is 
time  for  it  to  wake  up  to  its  new  problem.  The 
boy  whose  ambition  brought  him  to  the  old 
school  needed  its  vigorous  book  training.  The 
difficulties  of  Latin  and  Greek  set  him  a  mental 
task  commensurate  with  the  physical  trials  he 
had  overcome  from  tender  years.  If  he  proved 
able  to  cope  with  only  physical  difficulties  he 
went  back  to  the  farm;  so  Latin  and  Greek  per- 
formed excellent  service  as  a  fine-meshed  sieve. 
If  he  found  joy  in  mental  achievement,  as  he  had 
in  the  rough  bodily  struggle  of  the  countryside, 
he  went  on  to  intellectual  mastery,  growing 
stronger  with  every  victory.  It  was  the  problem 
of  the  old-time  learning  to  make  him  a  leader! 

The  immature  boy,  emerging  from  the  eighth 

30 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  BOY 

grade  in  the  grammar  school  to-day,  goes  to  the 
high  school  generally  because  his  friends  go  there 
and  because  he  has  nothing  better  to  do.  He  has 
no  definite  purpose,  little  ambition,  no  sense  of 
personal  responsibility,  no  resourcefulness.  His 
life  has  been  one  long  response  to  a  thousand 
appeals  to  his  desire  for  novelty  and  amusement. 
It  is  the  problem  of  the  new  school  still  to  train 
leaders,  but  its  first  problem  is  to  make  the  best 
possible  citizens  of  all. 

Our  first  question  in  making  useful  citizens  out 
of  these  youngsters  is  not  how  to  teach  them 
certain  traditional  studies.  In  no  school  subject 
is  there  a  sacramental  virtue  that  makes  it 
an  indispensable  means  of  intellectual  salvation. 
Let  us  remember,  too,  that  we  have  boys  of  every 
kind  of  temperament,  from  every  kind  of  home, 
with  every  kind  of  ability  —  and  no  two  alike. 
The  high  school  has  a  chance  to  help  them  for  a 
period  extending  from  a  few  months  to  four  years. 
Their  value  to  the  community  which  is  paying 
for  the  high  school  depends  on  their  integrity, 
their  economic  efiiciency,  and  their  militant  civic 
righteousness.  Is  it  not  a  fair  proposition  that 
the  school  should  study  its  raw  material  and  the 
kind  of  product  the  market  needs,  and  that  it 
should  turn  out  as  nearly  one  hundred  per  cent  of 

31 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

marketable  goods  as  the  conditions  will  permit? 

The  feelings  of  a  typical  youngster  about  to 
enter  the  high  school  and  the  motives  that  de- 
termine his  choice  of  a  course  may  be  represented 
by  some  such  diary  as  the  following:  — 

^^  January  ji.  I  am  to  enter  high  school  to- 
morrow —  one  day  more.  They  have  an  elevator 
down  there,  and  an  orchestra,  and  a  school  paper; 
and  you  have  six  teachers  instead  of  one;  and 
there  are  societies  and  fraternities  —  I  wonder  if 
they  will  rush  me!  And  you  have  to  take  a  for- 
eign language  and  algebra;  and  they  sometimes 
stand '  freshies '  on  their  heads  and  put  snow  down 
their  backs.  And  the  goblin  —  I  mean  the  prin- 
cipal —  will  get  you  if  you  don't  watch  out. 

"February  i.  I  got  up  at  five  o'clock  and  went 
over  to  'Red*  Smith's.  I  kept  thinking  what  the 
boys  would  do  when  they  saw  me  in  long  pants; 
and  every  little  while  I  had  a  queer  feeling  just 
at  the  top  of  my  belt  when  I  thought  of  going  to 
high  school.  Well,  the  boss  guy  —  they  call  him 
'Blinker'  —  gave  us  a  game  of  talk  and  told  us 
where  to  go  —  and  we  went,  or  tried  to;  but  I 
did  n't  always  get  there.  I  wonder  what  he  '11  say 
when  he  finds  I  did  n't  show  up  in  two  of  my 
classes.  There  were  five  himdred  of  us  freshies. 
I  took  Latin  instead  of  German  or  French 
32 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  BOY 

because  'Red '  did  —  and  his  uncle  is  a  preacher." 
These  immature  boys  have  reached  a  convul- 
sive change  in  their  school  lives,  and  now  as  never 
before  need  wise  and  alert  individual  guidance. 
K  the  high  school  is  to  give  this  it  must  first 
bridge  the  gulf  between  the  grammar  school  and 
itself,  and  profit  by  all  that  the  lower  school  has 
learned  about  every  boy.  The  grammar  school 
and  the  high  school  are  coordinate  parts  of  a  big 
public  agency  working  for  the  improvement  of 
society.  It  would  be  about  as  reasonable  for  the 
buyers  of  a  mercantile  house  to  ignore  the  sales- 
men as  it  is  for  the  high  school  to  assume  an 
air  of  independence  —  not  to  say  of  collegiate 
arrogance  —  toward  the  grammar  school.  As  a 
rule,  however,  each  of  the  schools  goes  its  own 
way,  with  little  notice  of  the  other  beyond  an  oc- 
casional complaint.  About  all  that  ever  happens  by 
way  of  real  cooperation  is  a  report  from  the  gram- 
mar school  as  to  how  many  pupils  are  going  to  the 
high  school  and  sometimes  how  many  have  elected 
each  language  or  course.  If  there  were  cooordi- 
nation,  the  conmients  carried  back  to  the  gram- 
mar school  by  the  boys  about  conditions,  meth- 
ods, and  teachers  in  the  high  school  would  be  a 
most  illuminating  and  valuable  opportunity  for 
the  latter  institution  to  see  itself  as  others  see  it. 

33 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

Suppose  we  follow  the  fortunes  of  a  typical 
group  of  a  hundred  high  school  freshmen.  The 
grammar  school  principal  was  not  infrequently 
a  sort  of  combined  father  —  or  mother  —  con- 
fessor, social  worker,  and  home  missionary  to  the 
community.  He  has  dealt  with  the  children  as 
individuals  for  eight  or  nine  years,  and  knows  the 
personal  peculiarities  of  John  and  Frank.  He  has 
strengthened  the  feeble  wills  and  confirmed  the 
growing  virtues  by  requiring  a  pretty  faithful 
accoimting  every  day  for  the  daily  task. 

When  they  reach  the  high  school  these  pupils 
are  thrown  at  once  on  their  own  resources.  They 
have  been  accustomed  to  prepare  their  lessons 
mostly  in  school  under  the  teacher's  eye,  and 
they  have  had  to  "stay  and  make  up"  if  the 
day's  work  was  neglected.  Each  pupil  was 
accountable  to  only  one  teacher,  who  saw  that  a 
proper  balance  was  preserved  between  the  vari- 
ous subjects  and  that  the  weak  places  were 
strengthened.  Now  they  have  four  or  five  abso- 
lutely new  subjects.  They  take  their  books 
home,  sit  down  with  them  in  the  family  circle, 
and,  while  trying  to  study,  hsten  with  one  ear  to 
the  evening's  gossip.  Next  day,  if  they  fail  to 
recite,  they  "get  a  zero"  —  an  excellent  prepara- 
tion for  another  zero  to-morrow,  particularly 

34 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  BOY 

when  their  zeros  have  plenty  of  good  company. 
These  zeros  do  their  deadly  work  at  report  time 
and  spell  failure  at  the  end  of  the  term;  but,  like 
other  kinds  of  future  punishment,  are  more 
ejSicacious  for  vengeance  than  for  reform.  Each 
boy  recites  or  fails  to  recite  to  five  or  six  teachers, 
no  one  of  whom  knows  how  much  study  other 
teachers  are  requiring  nor  what  kind  of  work  the 
pupil  is  doing  in  other  subjects.  Every  one  of 
these  teachers  is  a  specialist  in  her  branch  of 
learning.  She  casts  an  eye  of  pity  on  the  masses 
who  are  rotting  in  ignorance  of  her  particular 
mystery;  so  her  duty  is  "as  plain  as  way  to 
parish  church."  These  teachers,  moreover,  are 
generally  the  raw  recruits  to  the  profession. 
Those  whose  experience  has  proved  their  success 
are  given  charge  of  the  smaller  classes  of  advanced 
pupils  who  are  preparing  for  college.  By  these 
graduates  the  school  is  to  be  judged;  therefore, 
if  the  teacher's  ability  is  doubtful  she  is  given 
freshmen,  where  her  lack  of  skill  will  not  show. 

Another  important  fact  about  the  freshman's 
teachers  is  that  probably  four  fifths  of  them  are 
women.  Far  be  it  from  the  writer  to  disparage 
the  quality  of  instruction  given  by  women  teach- 
ers; it  is  probably  fully  up  to  the  average  of  that 
imparted  by  men.  We  need  women  in  boys'  high 

35 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

schools  to  give  the  young  barbarians  some  con- 
tact with  the  refining  influences  of  femininity; 
but,  as  Rosalind  ironically  implied,  you  can  have 
too  much  of  a  good  thing.  The  male  teacher, 
moreover,  as  a  rule,  has  been  a  boy  himself,  and 
the  boy  needs  his  influence.  Hence  it  seems  most 
unfortunate  that  high  schools  should  be  so  largely 
"manned  by  women."  If  the  faculties  could  be 
composed  of  about  equal  numbers  of  men  and 
women,  of  equally  good  personality,  the  service 
of  the  schools  in  really  shaping  future  society 
would  be  infinitely  enlarged. 

Our  boys  are  entering  a  new  stage  of  life.  They 
leave  the  home  community  and  go  downtown  to 
school.  Thus  are  opened  up  to  them  the  thousand 
distractions  of  the  center  of  the  city  —  the  street- 
car ride,  department  stores,  faJdrs,  moving- 
picture  shows,  vaudeville,  poolrooms  —  and 
worse.  In  the  school  there  are  athletics,  societies, 
the  big  study  haU,  the  crowded  corridors,  the 
lunchroom,  the  gymnasium,  and  the  school 
organization  which  often  seems  necessarily  inex- 
orable. To  it  they  are  not  individuals,  but  a 
mass,  too  often  subjected  to  the  law  of  the 
survival  of  the  fittest.  This  is  unfortunate,  be- 
cause it  often  happens  that  the  fittest  do  not 
survive,  and  that  those  capable  of  the  largest 
36 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  BOY 

growth  are  stunted  because  the  school  has  a 
single  treatment  for  all  cases.  Witness  Edison, 
Darwin,  Beecher,  Emerson,  Wagner,  Seward, 
and  many  others  whom  the  schools  discarded  as 
dunces. 

Of  our  hundred  boys,  many  are  hopelessly  lost, 
so  far  as  the  first  term's  work  goes,  at  the  end  of 
the  first  six  weeks.  Then  they  begin  to  drop  out. 

According  to  the  statistics  of  the  United  States 
Commissioner  of  Education,  41  boys  will  not 
return  the  second  year;  62  of  the  original  100  will 
not  return  the  third,  and  76  will  not  return  the 
fourth  year.  Of  the  24  left,  somewhere  from  5  to 
10  will  go  to  college.  Here,  then,  are  the  American 
Beauty  roses,  for  which  we  have  pinched  off  90 
to  95  buds.  And  after  all  our  trouble  the  college 
tells  us  that  of  these  only  one  is  really  a  rose  and 
that  the  rest  are  sunflowers. 

The  disaster  to  many  who  stay  in  the  school  is 
greater  than  to  those  who  are  shoved  out.  "I 
must  keep  my  eye  on  that  gang!"  remarked  the 
principal  of  a  high  school.  The  gang  comprised 
about  a  dozen  boys;  and  the  sudden  hush  as  the 
principal  and  his  companion  passed  did  not  indi- 
cate a  lack  of  interesting  material  for  conversa- 
tion. That  afternoon  the  water  was  turned  on  at 
the  emergency  hose  in  the  hall  near  the  oflice, 

37 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

and  the  floor  was  drenched  with  six  or  eight  bar- 
rels of  water  before  it  could  be  turned  ofiF.  That 
gang  had  four  interests  in  high  school  in  about 
the  following  order:  first,  the  "frats";  second, 
athletics;  third,  deviltry;  and  fourth,  girls,  — 
all  very  human;  none  particularly  fraught  with 
educational  or  cultural  possibilities.  Worse  than 
this,  that  gang,  composed  of  school  loafers,  is 
typical  of  nearly  every  high  school  in  the  country. 

The  loafer  is  very  frequently  a  chronic  truant. 
Here  is  a  case  that  you,  Mr.  Principal,  will  recog- 
nize. Reginald  Buehler  sent  word  that  he  had 
gone  to  work  and  you  took  his  name  ofif  the  roll. 
Two  weeks  later  —  or  was  it  six?  —  you  found 
out,  quite  by  accident,  that  his  parents  supposed 
he  had  been  in  school  every  day.  He  had  left 
home  at  the  usual  time  and  in  all  respects  had 
been  a  model  of  punctuality.  His  mother  had 
found  a  queer  piece  of  cubical  chalk  in  his  pocket 
and  had  wondered  at  the  change  in  school  sup- 
plies since  she  was  a  girl!  Once  or  twice  she  mis- 
trusted that  she  smelled  —  but  her  boy  certainly 
was  above  such  suspicion! 

Did  you  find  out  what  was  really  the  trouble 

with  that  culprit?  Did  he  ever  tell  you  that  he 

hated  school,  that  he  hated  his  teachers,  that  he 

hated  his  lessons,  that  he  hated  you?  Did  you 

38 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  BOY 

talk  to  him  about  culture  and  mental  discipline 
and  about  preparing  for  life?  Did  you  force  him 
back  into  the  classes  he  hated  because  the  first 
article  of  your  pedagogical  religion  was  that 
without  the  shedding  of  Latin  there  is  no  remis- 
sion of  ignorance? 

The  loafer  is  not  intellectual.  You  may  sugar- 
coat  your  mental  pill  an  inch  thick  —  it  is  still 
as  bitter  as  quinine.  He  wants  to  do  something! 
Then,  why  not  give  him  something  to  do?  Li 
nine  cases  out  of  ten,  if  you  take  the  loafer  out 
of  the  Latin  class  and  make  him  roll  up  his 
sleeves  and  sweat  while  he  is  fitting  two  boards 
together,  he  will  be  captivated.  He  will  even 
study  a  book  if  he  can  see  how  it  connects  up  with 
his  own  life  —  now.  He  probably  will  make  a 
bungling  job  memorizing  the  provisions  of 
Magna  Charta;  but  he  can  easily  be  induced  to 
study  the  activities  of  the  ward  boss,  and  he  can 
be  made  to  see  how  this  functionary's  machina- 
tions blast  the  efficiency  of  the  fixe  and  police 
departments.  He  probably  will  not  get  frightened 
over  the  direful  prospect  of  humanity  threatened 
in  the  theory  of  Mai  thus;  but  he  can  be  made 
to  see  that  he  is  paying  freight  when  he  buys  an 
orange. 

Another  queer  thing  about  the  loafer  is  that  he 

39 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

very  often  makes  good.  This  he  does  in  spite  of 
the  school  which  has  done  its  best  to  spoil  him 
by  a  most  thorough  course  in  not  doing  the  thing 
he  is  supposed  to  do.  When  he  strikes  his  gait, 
however,  he  often  develops  an  earning  capacity 
that  gives  a  sickly  grin  to  his  professor's  chronic 
state  of  dignified  impecuniosity. 

Is  it  not  a  fair  proposition  that  the  school 
should  provide  something  for  the  loafer  to  do? 
Experiments  have  been  made  with  various  lines 
of  manual  activity  in  the  school  and  with  a  com- 
bination of  schoolwork  and  outside  shopwork 
that  have  proved  the  possibility  of  enlisting  the 
interest  of  the  loafer.  Moreover,  when  these 
interests  are  discovered  they  are  always  found  to 
demand  some  form  of  academic  work;  so  that 
the  boy  as  he  is,  and  not  the  boy  as  he  might  be 
if  he  were  cast  in  the  ideal  mold  used  for  us  school- 
masters, is  put  to  school  to  learn  something  of 
value  to  him. 

What  have  we  done  for  the  boy  who,  because 
of  economic  stress,  can  come  only  a  year  or  so? 
We  have  tried  to  teach  him  to  swim  by  giving 
him  a  chemical  analysis  of  H2O.  We  have  offered 
him  a  curriculimi  of  admittedly  little  practical 
value,  however  well  it  may  be  devised  as  a  basis 
for  something  further  on,  where  he  can  never 
40 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  BOY 

hope  to  go.  It  is  as  if  a  salesman  out  of  employ- 
ment should  ask  for  a  letter  of  introduction  to  the 
owner  of  a  big  department  store  and  be  given  a 
passport  to  Russia. 

The  beginning  of  every  term  brings  to  the 
principal's  office  several  parents,  representative 
of  many  more  in  like  circumstances,  with  an 
appeal  like  this:  "My  boy  can  stay  in  school  one 
year  or  possibly  two.  What  can  you  give  him 
that  will  help  him  to  earn  a  living  at  the  end 
of  that  time?"  This  insistent  question  is  often 
backed  by  home  details  that  must  arouse  admi- 
ration for  the  parents  whose  self-denial  makes 
possible  even  a  meager  opportunity  for  their  chil- 
dren's secondary  education.  Here  is  another  that 
is  typical  of  a  familiar  tragedy  that  you,  Mr. 
Principal,  will  recognize:  — 

"Please,  Professor  Virgil,  may  I  drop  Latin 
and  algebra?  When  I  entered  I  expected  to  go 
through  school  and  go  on  to  college;  but  my 
father  died  last  summer.  My  mother  says  that 
if  I  will  sell  papers  this  winter  she  will  try  to  keep 
me  in  school  until  June.  Then  I  must  get  a  job 
and  help  support  my  younger  brothers  and 
sisters.  I  would  like  to  take  something  that  will 
help  me  next  June." 

Then  you  gave  the  boy  a  nice  fatherly  talk, 

41 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

*  wherein  you  painted  a  picture  of  the  beauty  of 
culture  and  the  mysteries  of  mental  discipline 
on  a  canvas  already  filled  with  computations  of 
rent,  potatoes,  and  coal.  You  ended  your  dis- 
sertation with  a  casual  remark  that  you  could  not 
think  of  letting  him  drop  these  subjects,  anyway, 
because  your  first  official  duty  is  to  uphold  the 
standard  of  the  school.  Maybe,  under  your  breath, 
you  were  cursing  the  whole  culture,  mental-disci- 
pline, and  upholding-the-standard  fetish,  and 
wishing  you  could  give  the  boy  what  he  needed 
to  help  him  meet  his  problem;  but  if  you  were 
diplomatic  you  held  your  peace  —  and  your  job 
—  and  showed  to  the  next  newspaper  reporter 
that  called  a  complimentary  letter  you  had  re- 
ceived from  the  registrar  of  Yale  on  the  excellent 
record  of  Reginald  Smythe,  19 — . 
\  The  high  school  is  failing  to  solve  its  social 
problem  for  two  reasons:  first,  because  its  course 
is  too  narrow;  second,  because  the  method  and 
I  scope  of  its  teaching  are  cramped  into  the  Chinese 
I  shoe  of  tradition.  The  broader  course  that  will 
meet  the  needs  of  all  classes  of  boys  —  from  the 
"footballer"  to  the  bookworm  —  must  place  on 
an  equality  its  foreign  languages,  mathematics, 
history,  civics,  economics,  sociology,  agriculture, 
business  training,  and  manual  arts.  Moreover, 
42 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  BOY 

the  content  of  the  courses  in  each  of  these  lines, 
and  the  aims  and  the  methods  of  instruction, 
must  be  determined  by  the  capacity  of  the  stu- 
dents as  they  are  and  by  social  and  economic 
needs,  rather  than  by  the  foundations  required 
for  advanced  courses  or  by  professorial  theories 
as  to  the  complete  and  logical  organization  of 
subjects. 

Perhaps  no  single  fault  of  our  modern  pedagogy 
has  caused  greater  waste  than  the  substitution 
of  the  logical  for  the  pedagogical  method.  The 
foundation  for  a  forty-story  sky-scraper  must  be 
laid  deep  in  tlie  underlying  rock,  but  if  we  were 
compelled  to  build  our  dwellings  on  such  a  basis, 
the  most  of  us  would  live  in  tents.  Similarly, 
plans  for  the  treatment  of  various  subjects, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  post-graduate  research, 
would  call  for  so  much  time  delving  for  founda- 
tions that  the  builders  woiild  never  reach  the 
surface  where  flourish  the  flora  and  fauna  of 
everyday  life. 

The  exaltation  of  certain  subjects,  such  as 
foreign  languages  and  the  higher  mathematics, 
into  an  aristocracy  so  narrows  the  course  that  it 
meets  the  needs  only  of  those  who  may  be  classi- 
fied as  book-minded  in  contrast  with  the  motor- 
minded  type  of  children.    Professor  Dewey  re- 

43 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

minds  us  that  distinctively  intellectual  tastes 
are  by  no  means  universal  either  as  indigenous 
or  cultivated  products.  Probably  this  is  fortu- 
nate, because  in  spite  of  all  our  labor-saving 
machinery  there  still  remains  an  overwhelming 
quantity  of  physical  work  that  must  be  performed 
in  the  interest  of  the  progress  of  the  race. 

The  absolute  prescription  of  the  aristocracy 
of  the  curriculum  rests  either  upon  the  theory  of 
the  old  "faculty  psychology"  —  that  the  mind 
is  an  aggregation  of  water-tight  compartments 
and  each  of  these  subjects  a  pumping-station  for 
one  of  them  —  or  upon  the  theory  of  general 
discipline  —  that  power  generated,  in  the  study 
of  Latin,  for  example,  can  be  switched  on  to  the 
problem  of  making  two  blades  of  grass  grow 
where  one  grew  before.  Both  of  these  theories 
have  of  late  been  seriously  questioned  by  many  of 
the  best  psychologists,  and  in  their  place  the 
formation  of  correct  habits  as  the  fundamental 
basis  of  education  has  been  emphasized.  Even 
granting  the  formal-discipline  theory,  there 
would  be  ample  justification  for  a  broader  cur- 
riculum. Ex-President  Eliot,  in  his  admirable 
little  book,  Education  for  Efficiency,  says:  "We 
have  lately  become  convinced  that  accurate 
work  with  carpenters'  tools,  or  lathe,  or  hammer 

44 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  BOY 

and  anvil,  or  violin,  or  piano,  or  pencil,  or  crayon, 
or  camel's-hair  brush,  trains  well  the  same  nerves 
and  ganglia  with  which  we  do  what  is  ordinarily 
called  thinking." 

In  this  process  the  languages  and  higher  math- 
ematics must  stand  on  their  merits  alongside  the 
hammer,  the  violin,  and  the  pencil;  and  many 
educators  are  becoming  convinced  that  for  a 
considerable  proportion  of  our  pupils  the  tradi- 
tional studies  are  rather  a  means  of  forcing  them 
to  leave  the  school  in  disgust  than  of  furnishing 
a  discipline  that  is  certain  to  be  valuable. 

The  high  school  must  give  every  boy  some 
experience  in  handling  material  things.  Nowhere 
else  in  the  course  is  there  so  great  an  opportunity 
to  fasten  the  interest  of  the  motor-minded  boy 
who  refuses  to  sit  down  and  study  a  book.  An 
actual  experiment  with  fifty  boys  of  the  school- 
loafer  type  recently  completely  upset  one  princi- 
pal's classical  pedagogy.  These  boys  had  proved 
absolute  failures  in  the  traditional  course.  There 
was  hardly  one  who  had  not  repeated  Latin, 
algebra,  or  ancient  history  —  or  all  of  those 
branches  —  from  once  to  half  a  dozen  times. 
They  were  selected  because  of  their  proficiency 
in  failure,  and  were  placed  in  charge  of  a  good, 
red-blooded  man  in  a  thoroughly  equipped  wood- 

45 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

working  shop.  They  made  working  drawings  of 
pieces  of  furniture  that  they  wanted  to  build, 
then  went  at  the  job  with  good  quartered  oak. 
Every  surface  and  every  joint  was  inspected  by 
the  teacher;  and  that  meant  that  it  must  be  good 
enough  to  pass  muster  in  any  first-class  shop. 
The  course  was  no  "snap,"  but  the  shop  was 
busy  before  and  after  as  well  as  in  school  —  and 
it  "delivered  the  goods."  It  was  a  lotion  to  the 
soul  of  the  principal  —  who  had  been  a  Nemesis 
on  the  track  of  these  boys  and  their  like  for  many 
years  —  just  to  watch  them  work.  He  would 
have  classified  perspiration  from  one  of  those 
foreheads  with  the  proverbial  pot  of  gold  at  the 
end  of  the  rainbow,  but  —  mirahile  dictu!  —  he 
really  saw  them  sweat. 

Bill  Davis  had  been  in  school  four  years  with- 
out passing  all  of  the  first-term  subjects  —  he 
had  cost  the  district  more  in  the  time  of  principal 
and  teachers  than  he  ever  seemed  likely  to  earn; 
but  Bill  put  together  a  table-top  so  well  that  it 
was  hard  to  find  where  the  boards  were  joined. 
He  decided  to  abandon  his  father's  plan  to  make 
him  a  Latin  professor  and  become  a  piano- 
maker.  It  is  a  safe  prediction  that  his  pianos  will 
ring  truer  than  his  Latin  quantities. 

Of  those  fifty  boys  the  shop  failed  to  reach 
46 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND,  THE  BOY 

Just  one.  Their  academic  work,  too,  improved  — 
particularly  in  one  subject,  of  which  more  here- 
after. The  old-line  course  of  study  had  no  point 
of  contact  with  these  boys.  The  school  was 
teaching  them  only  idleness.  Ought  they,  there- 
fore, to  be  dumped  on  the  street  or  ought  the 
school  to  provide  for  them  as  well  as  for  the  boys 
whose  tastes  conform  more  nearly  to  our  school- 
masterish  ideal  ? 

The  school  should  provide  business  training 
based  on  actual  commercial  processes.  It  should 
give  the  boy  who  must  go  to  work  next  June  — 
because  he  has  lost  his  father  —  a  preparation 
that  will  make  him  worth  more  money  to  his 
employer.  To  do  this  it  will  make  sure  that  he 
can  write  a  bill  legibly,  add  it  up  correctly  and 
know  that  it  is  right.  It  will  hammer  at  his 
English  until  he  can  give  an  accurate  report  and 
read  and  follow  intelligible  instructions.  It  will 
give  him  some  idea  of  the  social,  political,  and 
economic  questions  of  to-day  —  in  short,  it  will 
do  all  that  a  school  can  do  to  fit  the  boy  to  "  carry 
the  message  to  Garcia";  and  then  neither  school 
nor  society  will  worry  if  he  does  not  know  the 
occasion  of  the  Third  Punic  War,  the  use  of  the 
subjunctive  in  indirect  discourse,  or  the  formula 
ioT  x  +  y  to  the  wth. 

47 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

There  is  one  more  task  for  the  school  more 
important  than  any  of  those  already  enumerated 
—  that  is,  training  in  citizenship.  To  be  sure,  we 
now  have  courses  in  history  and  civics;  but  as  yet 
practically  nothing  has  been  done  in  training  for 
the  everyday  duties  whose  fulfillment  makes  for 
righteous  community  life. 

The  fifty  boys  who  went  to  making  furniture 
were  also  taught  a  new  type  of  civics.  They 
attacked  the  city  government  first.  They  in- 
vestigated the  city  charter,  interviewed  the  heads 
of  the  city  departments,  found  out  a  lot  about 
policemen,  firemen,  school-teachers,  ward  bosses, 
the  dominant  party  organization,  and  the  com- 
mission form  of  government.  One  of  their  first 
discoveries  was  the  power  of  the  boss  whose 
scepter  must  be  held  out  to  every  successful 
applicant  for  a  position  in  the  police  and  fire 
departments.  They  also  found  that  every  ordi- 
nance in  a  city  which  thought  itself  to  be  exer- 
cising the  functions  of  popular  government  must 
receive  the  approval  of  the  same  uncrowned 
despot  before  it  could  become  a  law. 

So  far  as  the  records  of  the  school  revealed, 
not  a  boy  of  the  fifty  had  ever  absorbed  a  school- 
book  unless  through  the  physical  integument; 
but  for  once  they  began  to  study.  Was  it  worth 
48 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  BOY 

while  for  those  boys  to  work  in  the  shop — to  in- 
vestigate the  government  in  which  they  were  to 
have  a  voice?  At  that  time  there  was  not  a  college 
east  of  Chicago  that  would  give  them  a  minute's 
entrance  credit  on  fair  terms  for  any  of  this  work. 

In  closing  this  chapter,  let  me  repeat:  All  honor 
to  the  classics  and  to  the  type  of  education  for 
which  they  stand.  They  have  helped  to  give  the 
nation  its  literature,  its  institutions,  its  laws. 
We  still  need  them  and  there  is  not  the  slightest 
danger  that  they  will  not  persist;  but  we  need 
something  more.  We  need  trained  men  for  all 
our  varied  activities.  We  need  every  citizen  to 
think  in  terms  of  community  and  social  life.  The 
boys  in  our  schools  cannot  all  be  doctors,  lawyers, 
preachers,  and  teachers.  They  are  crying  out 
for  equal  opportunities  —  a  thing  very  different 
from  identical  opportunities.  If  it  is  true,  then, 
that  the  public  needs  a  new  kind  of  service  from 
the  boys  in  the  high  school,  and  that  the  boys 
need  the  training  that  will  enable  them  to  give 
that  service,  it  is  the  problem  of  the  high  school  to 
broaden  its  course  and  modernize  its  methods. 

Is  it  not  true  that  — 

(i)  The  public  is  paying  for  the  high  schools? 

(2)  The  public  is  therefore  entitled  to  the 
largest  possible  service  to  all  the  people? 

49 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

(3)  The  high  school's  largest  service  is  the  best 
possible  training  for  economic  efficiency, 
good  citizenship,  and  full  and  complete 
living  for  all  its  pupils? 


V 


Ill 

THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  GHIL 

It  is  a  notorious  fact  that  the  American  people 
are  shrewd  in  their  business  affairs.  Individually 
they  scrutinize  every  business  proposition  with 
cold-blooded  suspicion.  Strangely  enough  these 
sharp  bargainers  are  the  largest  patrons  of  com- 
munity gold-bricks  in  the  world. 

When  the  free  and  independent  American 
citizen  collectively  bought  advanced  educational 
opportunities  for  his  daughter  he  was  given  in 
return  for  his  money  an  article  that  had  been 
made  for  his  son.  Occasionally  it  was  what  the 
boy  needed ;  once  in  a  while  it  fitted  the  girl.  If  it 
fitted  neither  of  them  the  youngsters  were  to 
blame,  and  were  educationally  good  for  nothing 
but  to  be  cast  into  the  outer  darkness  of  igno- 
rance. Yet  the  citizen  aforesaid  continued  to  pay 
his  honest  dollars  in  school  taxes,  and  to  blame 
his  children  when  they  refused  to  feed  on  the 
ashes  of  a  burned-out  civilization. 

What  does  the  girl  need  from  the  high  school? 
What  does  society  want  the  public  high  school 
to  do  for  its  half-million  girls? 
51 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

When  the  girl  comes  to  the  high  school,  she 
is  a  tall,  lank,  awkward,  rompish,  bashful,  self- 
conscious,  freakish,  lovable  youngster,  the  idol  of 
her  father's  heart.  When  she  leaves  the  high  school 
after  four  years,  she  is  a  neat,  trim,  graceful,  self- 
possessed,  responsive,  sweet  girl-graduate,  soon 
to  be  the  idol  of  somebody  else's  heart.  This 
transfiguration,  however,  was  not  the  work  of 
the  high  school;  it  must  be  credited  to  Nature. 

While  Nature  is  working  this  transformation, 
the  school  can  do  much  for  both  the  parties  to 
the  contract  —  the  girl  and  society.  The  first 
thing  that  society  wants  of  our  girl  is  good  health. 
This  is  the  first  essential  for  her  efficient  service 
and  personal  happiness  in  shop,  office,  store, 
school,  or  home.  The  future  of  the  race,  so  far  as 
she  represents  it,  depends  upon  her  health.  What 
is  the  high  school  doing  to  improve  the  girl's 
health?  In  the  overwhelming  majority  of  cases 
absolutely  nothing.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is 
subjecting  her  to  a  regimen  planned  for  boys, 
without  the  slightest  consideration  of  the  physi- 
cal and  functional  differences  between  the  sexes. 

It  pays  no  attention  to  the  curvature  of  the 

spine  developed  by  the  exclusively  sit-at-a-desk- 

and-study-a-book  type  of  education  bequeathed 

to  the  girlhood  of  the  nation  by  the  mediaeval 

52 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  GIRL 

monastery;  it  ignores  the  chorea  developed  by 
over-study  and  imder-exercise;  it  disregards  the 
malnutrition  of  hasty  breakfasts,  and  limches  of 
pickles,  fudge,  cream-puffs,  and  other  kickshaws, 
not  to  mention  the  catch-penny  trash  too  often 
provided  by  the  Janitor  or  concessionnaire  of  the 
school  luncheon,  who  is  not  doing  business  for  his 
health  or  for  anybody  else's;  it  neglects  eye- 
strain, unhygienic  dress,  uncleanly  habits,  anae- 
mia, periodic  headaches,  nervousness,  adenoids, 
and  wrong  habits  of  posture  and  movement. 

"That  is  the  duty  of  the  home."  Unquestion- 
ably it  is,  and  unquestionably  the  home  is  com- 
pletely failing  to  perform  this  duty.  The  omis- 
sion of  all  such  considerations  from  the  school 
program  will  not  make  the  home  any  more  effi- 
cient in  tasks  for  which  the  overwhelming  major- 
ity of  homes  have  not  the  necessary  intelligence. 
It  is  easy  to  forget  that  the  number  of  students 
in  the  American  high  school  has  quadrupled  in 
twenty  years,  and  that  in  the  same  period  the 
preponderance  of  our  population  has  shifted  from 
country  to  city.  Our  institutions  are  being 
strained  to  meet  the  changing  conditions  of  this 
period  in  which  our  whole  social,  industrial, 
economic,  and  political  life  is  in  a  state  of  almost 
revolutionary  transition;  but  meet  it  they  must 

53 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

if  our  civilization  is  to  fulfill  the  promise  of  its 
possibilities.  The  schools  are  organized  to  serve 
the  progress  of  civilization  by  fitting  our  youth 
for  their  part  in  the  new  order.  If  a  duty  that 
under  an  ideal  condition  should  belong  to  the 
home  can  at  present  be  performed  only  by  this 
socialized  agency  for  human  betterment;  and 
particularly  if  its  performance  for  the  future 
home-makers  by  this  agency  promises  to  fit  them 
to  take  this  duty  into  the  home  where  it  be- 
longs, it  seems  clear  that  the  argument  that  this 
is  the  duty  of  the  home  is  of  doubtful  application. 
The  use  of  this  argument  against  educational 
progress  is  an  excellent  shibboleth  to  separate 
the  two  educational  camps.  If  you  believe  that 
the  school  exists  only  to  increase  the  total  knowl- 
edge of  Latin  and  algebra  in  the  world,  the  cry 
"Leave  something  to  the  home"  is  perfectly 
logical,  and  the  assumption  by  the  school  of  such 
responsibilities  as  those  enumerated  above  is  an 
impertinence.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  you  believe 
that  the  school  is  a  social  institution  with  a  mis- 
sion of  public  service,  regardless  of  the  relation 
of  that  service  to  Latin  or  algebra,  then  you  must 
agree  that  it  should  look  after  what  every  one 
recognizes  as  the  foremost  need  of  the  adolescent 
girl. 

54 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  GIRL 

Li  many  schools  a  reception  is  given  every  term 
to  the  parents  of  the  entering  pupils.  Suppose 
we  stand  with  the  reception  committee  and  see 
what  sorts  of  homes  are  represented.  There  is  no 
gathering  like  it.  Here  comes  a  man  of  wealth 
and  social  position,  who  believes  in  true  democ- 
racy and  realizes  the  social  service  of  the  school ; 
behind  him  is  a  teamster,  whose  son  or  daughter 
may  be  to-morrow's  leader;  next,  a  shabbily 
dressed  widow,  made  timid  or  defiant  by  the  hard 
knocks  of  the  workaday  world;  then  a  clergyman; 
then  a  carpenter,  justly  proud  of  the  daughter 
who  stands  at  the  head  of  her  class;  then  a  newly- 
rich  in  ostentatious  finery.  Each  is  led  up  and 
introduced  by  the  son  or  daughter,  and  when  you 
have  met  them  all,  you  will  say  that  you  have 
seen  a  microcosm  of  American  democracy.  If  you 
are  patriotic,  you  will  give  thanks  and  send  your 
own  child  right  along  to  the  public  school  to  meet 
real  life  conditions  and,  perchance,  to  eradicate 
any  traces  of  snobbery  and  pharisaism  that  she 
may  have. 

If  that  evening's  experience  does  not  convince 
you  that  it  is  the  business  of  the  school  to  do  for 
its  girls  what  literally  tens  of  thousands  of  the 
homes  cannot  do  for  them,  go  with  the  kind- 
hearted  teacher  to  visit  a  sick  girl.    Meet  the 

55 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

parent  who  cannot  speak  a  word  of  English,  note 
the  meager  house,  measure  the  influence  of  the 
locality,  count  the  saloons  and  "movies,"  hear 
the  ragtime  hurdy-gurdy,  be  thankful  that 
society  has  provided  a  hope  for  better  things  for 
children  from  such  surroundings,  but  do  not 
come  back  and  descant  about  the  school  sup- 
planting the  sacred  office  of  the  home. 

One  fact  that  every  educator  in  both  camps 
knows  is  that  the  home  is  not  attending  to  the 
health  of  the  adolescent  girl.  This  problem  is 
pressing  upon  us  now  largely  because  of  the  revo- 
lution in  living  conditions  that  has  come  within 
the  last  quarter  of  a  century.  The  immense 
growth  of  our  cities,  the  fierce  struggle  for  exist- 
ence, the  increased  cost  of  living,  and,  most  im- 
portant of  all,  the  tremendous  number  of  children 
of  foreign  parentage,  make  it  imperative  that 
the  public  high  school  shall  conserve  the  health  as 
well  as  all  the  other  social  possibilities  of  its  girls. 
Organized  society  is  paying  for  the  school  and  is 
ready  to  sanction  a  work  for  God  and  for  human- 
ity that  the  church  has  long  and  vainly  sought 
to  do,  and  that  settlements  and  private  institu- 
tions have  attempted  in  a  few  isolated  localities. 
The  school  can  do  this  work  better  than  any  of 
these  because  it  can  reach  everybody,  it  is  not 
56 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  GIRL 

charity,  it  can  be  thoroughly  democratic,  it  has 
the  confidence  of  all  races  and  sects,  and  it  is  the 
natural  agency  for  fitting  the  children  of  all  the 
people  for  the  larger  living,  for  opening  to  them 
the  riches  of  literature,  for  training  their  taste 
and  appreciation,  and  for  fitting  every  girl  for 
the  highest  efficiency  of  which  she  is  capable. 

Loyalty  to  the  old-time  learning,  enthusiasm 
for  scholarship  and  for  exalted  academic  stand- 
ards, have  kept  many  of  our  best  educators  from 
giving  their  support  to  the  broader  activities  of 
the  school.  But  the  school  of  the  future  will  relin- 
quish none  of  these  ideals  of  scholarly  achieve- 
ment. It  will,  however,  add  to  these  ideals  the 
ideal  of  social  service;  it  will  recognize  the  recent 
economic  and  industrial  revolution,  and  will  ex- 
tend its  mission  to  the  sheep  that  are  not  of  the 
strictly  academic  fold. 

It  is  important  to  the  interests  of  health  that 
the  school  individualize  its  course  of  study.  An 
amount  of  work  easily  performed  by  one  girl  will 
make  another  girl  a  nervous  wreck.  It  is  nec- 
essary, therefore,  that  the  course  of  study  and 
the  machinery  of  administration  facilitate  the 
adaptation  of  the  burden  to  the  strength  and 
endurance  of  the  bearer. 

"My  daughter  is  missing  her  girlhood,"  writes 

57 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

a  distressed  mother.  "She  goes  straight  to  her 
studies  on  her  return  from  school  and  keeps  at 
them  until  eleven  or  twelve  o'clock  at  night. 
Saturday  she  must  catch  up  odds  and  ends  and 
do  a  couple  of  hours  of  drawing.  Even  Sunday  is 
encroached  upon  for  prescribed  supplementary 
reading.  She  is  nervous  and  irritable,  the  bloom 
of  her  beauty  is  fading,  and  I  feel  that  something 
must  be  done." 

It  is  possible  for  the  school  to  figure  out  by  the 
book  of  arithmetic  the  absurdity  of  this  claim, 
and  for  a  considerable  percentage  of  the  girls 
the  computation  will  be  right.  Yet  any  one  whose 
eyes  are  open  to  real  conditions  wiU  have  to 
admit  that  the  complaint  in  this  mother's  letter 
applies  more  or  less  directly  to  many  high-school 
girls.  It  is,  therefore,  perfectly  obvious  that  it 
should  be  made  easy  for  a  girl  to  take  a  heavier 
or  a  lighter  course  according  to  her  physical  and 
mental  strength;  and  more  than  that,  that  the 
school  should  very  often  insist  upon  curbing  a 
girl's  ambition  to  take  the  maximum  amount  of 
work. 

Would  it  not  be  a  sensible  program  for  the 

high  school  to  annoimce  as  the  first  article  of  its 

creed  the  development  of  its  girls  through  the 

critical  period  of  adolescence  into  the  best  possi- 

58 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  GIRL 

ble  physical  health  and  vigor?  If  it  is  to  do  this 
it  will  begin  with  a  thorough  physical  examina- 
tion, which  will  note  defects  such  as  those  men- 
tioned above  for  careful  individual  treatment. 
It  will  notify  the  home  where  medical  care  is 
needed,  and  will  itself  undertake  many  tasks  for 
physical  improvement  that  it  can  perform  much 
better  than  any  other  agency.  It  will  give  a 
thorough  course  in  personal  and  community 
hygiene,  with  physiology  enough  to  make  it 
intelligible.  It  will  require  every  girl  in  the  school 
to  take  this  course  the  first  year  so  as  to  reach 
those  who  drop  out  early,  even  if  one  of  the  sub- 
jects now  required  of  everybody  for  the  propaga- 
tion of  purely  academic  culture  has  to  be  elimi- 
nated or  deferred.  Closely  related  to  the  hygi- 
ene, it  will  give  a  scientific  interpretation  of  the 
girl's  environment.  The  biology  laboratory  will 
afford  a  fitting  introduction  to  certain  vital  phy- 
sical facts  that  the  home  ought  to  teach  and 
does  not,  and  will  also  give  an  understanding  of 
the  elements  of  bacteriology  as  applied  to  food 
and  household  hygiene. 

The  gymnasium  in  every  school  will  drill  the 

girls  in  correct  sitting,  standing,  walking,  running, 

and  in  addition  will  give  orthopaedic  treatment 

to  correct  individual  ills.  Baths  will  be  available 

59 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

for  all  and  will  be  enforced  where  necessary,  and 
there  need  be  no  doubt  about  jQuding  numer- 
ous cases  for  this  salutary  type  of  pedagogics. 
Demonstrations  of  correct  clothing  will  be  given, 
with  particular  attention  to  corsets  and  shoes. 
In  this  connection  it  is  interesting  to  note  that 
during  three  years  in  a  school  of  two  thousand 
girls,  in  every  single  one  of  the  twenty-five  cases 
where  a  girl  has  fallen  downstairs  she  has  been 
wearing  high-heeled  shoes.  Indeed,  while  it  may 
sound  like  paternalism,  there  is  strong  ground  for 
maintaining  that  the  school  should  prohibit  the 
more  flagrant  violations  of  good  sense  and  mod- 
esty in  the  form  of  low-necked  dresses,  trans- 
parencies, high-heeled  shoes,  tight-lacing,  and 
complexions  of  the  white  that  never  was  on  land 
or  sea. 

The  school  luncheon,  run  on  a  cooperative 
plan,  will  provide  good,  nutritious  food  at  a 
moderate  price,  and  will  refuse  to  furnish  any- 
thing deleterious  to  the  health  of  the  growing 
girl.  Thus  it  will  tend  to  establish  correct  habits 
of  diet  and  serve  as  an  example  of  the  possibility 
of  securing  good  food  at  a  moderate  price.  But 
the  school  will  go  much  further  than  the  lunch- 
eon: it  will,  as  a  second  essential  of  its  course,  give 
to  every  girl  a  thorough  and  systematic  training 
60 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  GIRL 

to  fit  her  for  efficiency  in  the  home.  Did  you  ever 
know  of  a  case  like  this? 

John  Doe,  aged  twenty-two,  and  Mary  Roe, 
aged  twenty,  fell  in  love.  Following  the  natural 
order  of  the  universe,  that  was  just  about  what 
John  and  Mary  ought  to  do.  John  was  a  clerk 
earning  eighteen  dollars  a  week  and  spending  it 
all.  Mary  was  the  daughter  of  a  department- 
store  buyer  who  earned  twenty-five  hundred 
dollars  a  year.  As  the  courtship  became  serious 
John  began  to  save  money.  After  the  usual  hesi- 
tation and  misgivings  on  the  part  of  Mary's 
parents,  the  couple  were  married  and  lived  — 
thereby  hangs  a  tale  the  novelist  did  not  tell, 
because  there  was  not  a  ready  market  for  such 
a  story. 

Mary  had  developed  no  very  extravagant 
notions  on  her  father's  twenty-five  hundred  a 
year,  and  so  exhibited  the  usual  incompetent, 
bridish  ecstasy  in  starting  life  in  a  twenty-dollar- 
a-month  flat,  furnished  with  the  three  hundred 
dollars  John  had  saved  in  the  year  and  a  haK  of 
their  engagement.  The  yoimg  couple  did  not 
figure  out  expenses  much  in  detail,  but  of  course 
they  knew  that  if  Mary  did  the  housework  they 
could  live  on  what  John  had  been  paying  for  his 
board.  What  a  comforting  delusion  that  is  of 
6i 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

Cupid's,  that  two  can  live  as  cheaply  as  one! 
How  mightily  does  it  swell  ministerial  perqui- 
sites and  the  birth-rate! 

Mary's  housekeeping  was  a  good  illustration 
of  academic  helplessness.  The  gastronomic  mon- 
strosities she  evolved  with  the  aid  of  a  cookbook 
ruined  John's  digestion  and  his  temper.  In  spite 
of  her  best  efforts  the  bills  rose  faster  than  his 
salary.  And  with  all  her  mathematics  she  never 
could  balance  her  accounts.  When  she  did  not 
have  mamma  to  ask  where  things  were,  the  poor 
girl  was  hopelessly  bewildered.  She  did  every- 
thing the  hardest  way,  and  worked  in  vain  to 
keep  the  little  home  from  a  state  of  chaos.  John 
gradually  drifted  away  to  the  poolrooms  and 
saloons,  which  were  more  attractive  than  the 
home  he  was  paying  to  support. 

Mary  found  herself  shabbily  dressed  after  her 
trousseau  was  worn  out,  and  yet  she  had  to 
admit  that  the  now  twenty-two  dollars  a  week 
could  not  stand  the  neat  tailor-made  gown  at 
twenty-seven  dollars  and  a  half,  marked  down 
from  thirty-five,  forty,  or  fifty  dollars,  according 
to  the  popular  capacity  for  absorbing  show- 
window  fiction. 

It  makes  Httle  difference  on  just  which  of  the 
matrimonial  rocks  the  happy  little  bark  was 
62 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  GIRL 

wrecked.  Possibly  they  tided  over  a  temporary 
stringency  at  the  loan  shark's;  possibly  John 
missed  his  favorite  brand  of  bachelor  cigars  and 
other  necessities,  and  deserted;  possibly  he  found 
other  metal  more  attractive;  maybe  some  of  the 
fathers-  and  mothers-in-law  lent  friendly  advice, 
not  concealing  a  frank  recognition  of  the  short- 
comings of  the  other  father-  and  mother-in-law's 
child.  However  it  happened,  that  home  was  not 
a  bulwark  to  the  nation,  though  Mary  had  spent 
four  years  in  the  public  high  school,  and  at  pub- 
lic expense  had  passed  first-year  Latin,  Caesar, 
Cicero,  and  Virgil,  three  years  of  German,  three 
years  of  algebra  and  geometry,  two  years  of 
ancient  and  English  history,  and  four  years  of 
English.  This  had  kept  her  so  busy  that  she  had 
been  relieved  of  all  home  duties.  Every  one 
knows  that  it  is  important  for  a  girl  to  get  "an 
education." 

Just  here  it  should  be  emphasized  that  every- 
thing in  Mary's  high  school  course  was  good. 
There  was  not  a  subject  that  did  not  belong  in  the 
school  as  a  possibility  for  the  girl  who  surely 
needed  it.  But  it  seems  equally  evident  that  the 
exclusive  combination  was  not  all  that  Mary- 
needed.  When  she  undertook  to  keep  John's 
house  her  high  school  course  did  not  function. 

63 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

Yet  it  had  cost  the  community  between  three  and 
four  hundred  dollars  in  taxes.  It  had  cost  her 
father  at  least  eight  hundred  dollars.  The  com- 
munity had  a  wrecked  home  to  show  for  its  out- 
lay, and  Mary's  father  and  mother  had  an 
infinite  heartache.  John  himself  was  imdoubt- 
edly  to  blame,  but  the  potential  wreck  in  his 
life  had  at  least  not  been  averted  by  his  wife's 
resourcefulness.  It  would  be  presumptuous  to 
cast  up  accounts  for  the  recording  angel,  but 
it  would  be  altogether  proper  in  a  discussion 
of  moral  education  in  the  schools  to  suggest 
that  the  public  high  school  should  require  every 
girl  to  have  some  training  for  efficiency  in  the 
home. 

The  statement  by  the  United  States  Commis- 
sioner of  Education,  partially  quoted  in  a  pre- 
vious chapter,  again  becomes  interesting.  The 
percentage  of  pupils  studying  some  of  the  more 
important  subjects  in  8097  public  high  schools 
of  the  United  States  in  the  year  1909-10  was  as 
follows:  — 

Latin,  French  and  German 82.64 

Algebra  and  geometry 87.72 

English  literature 57-09 

Rhetoric S7-io 

History 55.03 

Domestic  economy 3.78 

64 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  GIRL 

The  latest  census  reports  show  that  of  Ameri- 
can women  twenty-five  years  old  and  over,  86.7 
per  cent  are  married.  If,  in  the  light  of  this  fact, 
we  agree  that  the  public  is  putting  its  money 
into  the  high  schools  that  its  children  may  there 
receive  the  best  possible  training  for  the  lives 
they  are  to  live,  does  not  our  present  practice  in 
the  education  of  girls  look  like  going  from  New 
York  to  Chicago  by  way  of  Cape  Horn? 

It  seems  like  a  platitude  to  point  out  how  the 
high  school  can  make  the  girls  more  efficient  in 
the  home.  Obviously,  it  can  teach  them  to  cook, 
to  prepare,  not  merely  a  few  puddings  and 
meringues  and  other  culinary  fripperies,  but 
good  solid  fare,  based  on  a  study  of  food  values, 
the  necessary  elements  in  a  meal  and  in  a  com- 
plete dietary.  Every  girl  should  be  taught  how 
to  distinguish  between  fresh  and  storage  eggs, 
how  to  use  oleomargarine  when  butter  soars  to 
fifty  cents  a  pound,  how  to  cook  the  cheaper  cuts 
of  meat,  how  to  utilize  the  nutritious  left-overs 
that  the  hired  girl  dumps  into  the  garbage.  In 
the  chemistry  classes  the  girl  should  learn  to 
detect  preservatives,  adulterants,  and  colorings; 
to  distinguish  between  honest  preserves  and  rot- 
ten fruit  pulp,  flavored  and  colored  with  coal 
tar;  to  discard  fruits  bleached  with  sulphurous 

65 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

acid;  to  determine  whether  a  given  fabric  is 
cotton,  silk,  linen,  or  wool;  to  remove  spots  and 
stains  from  various  fabrics,  and  a  thousand  other 
useful  scientific  applications. 

It  does  seem  strange  that  physics  and  chem- 
istry have  so  long  been  taught  on  a  purely  aca- 
demic basis  generally  remote  from  all  possible 
use.  The  laws  of  heat  and  light  are  not  the 
less  science  because  they  are  illustrated  by  the 
methods  of  heating  and  lighting  a  house,  their 
most  universal  application;  the  chemical  experi- 
ment by  which  gelatine  is  detected  in  milk  as  a 
substitute  for  the  cream  that  has  been  removed 
is  quite  as  educational  as  the  reaction  of  HCl 
and  MnaOa.  And  the  beauty  of  this  approach 
to  science  is  that  it  works  a  marvelous  transfor- 
mation in  the  pupil's  interest  in  the  study  and 
in  the  interest  of  the  community  in  the  school. 

The  girl  should  learn  in  the  school  enough  about 
dressmaking  and  general  sewing  so  that  later  she 
will  be  resourceful  in  making  and  remodeling  her 
own  and  her  children's  clothes,  hats,  and  so  forth. 
In  the  sewing  and  drawing  classes  taste  should 
be  trained  in  matters  of  both  color  and  form. 
The  work  in  these  two  departments  should  be 
very  closely  correlated,  the  dressmaking  and 
millinery  classes  furnishing  a  motive  and  a 
66 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  GIRL 

practical  application  of  the  instruction  in  draw- 
ing. Kinds  of  textiles,  durability,  washableness, 
adaptation  to  various  uses  should  all  be  taught, 
not  only  in  theory,  but  by  practical  application. 
Skill  in  household  decoration,  good  taste  in  the 
selection  and  arrangement  of  furniture,  discrim- 
ination between  clamorous  roses  and  pianissimo 
geometries  in  rugs  and  wall-paper,  and  between 
inexpensive  reproductions  of  the  world's  greatest 
pictures  and  the  polychromatic,  gilt-framed 
atrocities  of  the  department  stores,  all  these  are 
as  valuable  to  the  girl  and  the  community  as  the 
"discipline  and  culture"  of  paradigms,  prosody, 
and  parallelopipeds. 

It  is  highly  desirable  that  household  problems 
should  be  studied  completely  in  a  simply  fur- 
nished model  house,  which  can  be  cared  for  by 
the  girls  as  part  of  their  regular  school  work.  The 
household  budget  for  families  of  various  sizes 
and  incomes  should  be  carefully  analyzed,  and 
problems  of  buying  should  be  studied  at  first 
hand  in  the  stores  and  markets.  If  it  is  true,  as 
has  been  estimated,  that  the  woman  in  charge  of 
the  house  spends  eighty  per  cent  of  the  family 
income,  it  seems  as  if  such  training  as  is  here 
outlined  would  have  a  direct  value  in  raising  the 
economic  and  moral  status  of  the  home. 
67 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

Nor  are  these  the  only  domestic  problems  that 
the  community  has  a  right  to  demand  shall  be 
studied  by  the  future  home-makers  it  is  educat- 
ing. The  most  fimdamental  of  all  functions  of 
woman  is  that  of  motherhood.  But  the  instincts 
that  make  her  play  house,  tend  dolls,  and  sacri- 
fice for  her  children  need  to  be  educated  and 
trained  before  she  can  do  her  best  in  the  bearing 
and  rearing  of  the  race.  Excellent  examples  of 
the  salutary  results  of  even  a  little  instruction 
by  visiting  nurses  and  public  demonstrations  of 
baby-saving  have  occurred  in  cities  recently. 
For  example,  in  Philadelphia  the  decrease  in 
mortality  of  children  under  one  year,  after  a 
general  campaign  for  baby-saving  was  inaugu- 
rated, was  1 1. 8  per  cent.  In  four  of  the  most 
congested  wards  where  there  was  a  more  inten- 
sive campaign,  the  decrease  was  27.6  per  cent. 
The  total  decrease  in  the  number  of  deaths  dur- 
ing the  year  under  an  efficient  and  honest  admin- 
istration was  1887,  of  which  11 14,  or  59  per  cent, 
were  children  under  five  years  of  age. 

Trained  intelligence  on  the  part  of  the  mother 
would  do  infinitely  more  than  this,  and  the  only 
means  society  has  of  insuring  this  intelligence  is 
through  its  organized  agency  for  the  spread  of 
intelligence  —  the  pubhc  school.  In  the  public 
68 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  GIRL 

school,  therefore,  the  future  mothers  should 
learn,  for  example,  the  rudiments  of  infant  feed- 
ing—  that  the  majority  of  "patent"  foods  are 
inferior,  and  that  "modified  milk"  prepared 
under  the  physician's  direction  is  the  best  sub- 
stitute for  natural  feeding;  that  the  various 
digestive  functions  develop  at  different  ages,  and 
that,  therefore,  the  substitution  of  lentils  for 
lacteals  should  be  postponed.  They  should 
learn  how  to  dress  the  baby,  —  that  the  dress 
should  be  simple,  and  that  most  babies  are  over- 
dressed in  simimer-time.  They  should  be  taught 
to  recognize  the  early  symptoms  of  ailments 
conmion  to  babies  and  young  children,  and  to 
detect  the  early  signs  of  the  infectious  diseases 
of  childhood.  Thousands  of  infant  lives  could  be 
saved  if  people  understood  the  value  of  quaran- 
tine and  worked  with  the  public  health  officials 
rather  than  against  them. 

Moreover,  the  school  should  give  some  instruc- 
tion in  child  psychology  that  will  check  the  grow- 
ing anarchy  in  the  home,  or  perhaps  better  the 
despotism  too  often  exercised  over  the  home  by 
its  youngest  member.  This  training  will  leave 
no  excuse  for  any  of  its  pupils  who  in  later  years 
set  before  their  children  the  pernicious  example 
of  lying,  in  frightening  them  into  momentary 

69 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

submission  by  fictional  "bogey  men"  or  imagin- 
ary punishments.  It  will  teach  something  of  the 
characteristics  of  the  various  stages  of  physical, 
mental,  and  spiritual  development.  For  example, 
the  school  will  teach  the  true  nature  of  those 
imaginative  ebullitions  known  to  the  psycholo- 
gists as  "child  lies,"  which  our  Puritan  fathers 
excoriated  as  evidence  of  original  sin.  It  will 
teach  the  danger  of  "showing  off"  the  child 
until  his  vanity  demands  that  he  always  be  the 
center  of  observation.  It  will  make  clear  the 
scientific  cause  for  the  incessant  movements  by 
which  the  child  gives  vent  to  his  superfluous 
nervous  force,  and  thus  will  warn  against  the 
constant  repression  that  results  in  squirming, 
giggling,  ill-temper,  and  St.  Vitus's  dance.  Better 
still,  it  will  give  instruction  how  to  direct  this 
nervous  energy  into  joyous  play  or  happy,  con- 
structive, self-educative  activity.  In  a  word,  the 
school  will  concern  itself  with  those  discoveries 
of  modern  pedagogical  science  that  are  of  vital 
importance  to  the  welfare  of  the  race  in  adapting 
itself  to  its  present  artificial  environment. 

It  must  be  remembered,  however,  that  few 

girls  go  directly  from  the  high  school  into  their 

own  homes.    Even  a  superficial  acquaintance 

with  conditions  will  show  a  third  duty  of  the 

70 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  GIRL 

school.  An  overwhelming  number  of  our  girls 
must  have  a  training  that  will  enable  them  to 
earn  a  living  wage.  They  must  get  this  training 
during  the  years  usually  devoted  to  the  high 
school,  because  financial  stress  in  their  parents' 
homes  makes  it  imperative  that  they  speedily 
become  producers.  Some  can  stay  only  a  year, 
some  two,  some  three,  some  four.  Many  who  at 
their  entrance  might  expect  to  stay  only  a  short 
time  would  find  ways  to  remain  longer  if  they 
felt  the  school's  vital  connection  with  life.  Obvi- 
ously every  girl  should  receive  as  much  of  the 
larger  enlightenment  that  comes  from  academic 
work  as  she  can.  It  is  equally  clear  that  she 
should  receive  some  directly  marketable  training, 
for  we  must  remember  that  her  moral  and  spirit- 
ual life  often  depends  upon  her  economic  inde- 
pendence. 

With  the  exception  of  the  commercial  course 
offered  in  a  few  cities,  this  intensely  hvmian 
problem  has  hardly  been  touched  by  the  high 
school.  A  few  trade  schools  for  girls  in  various 
parts  of  the  country  are  doing  excellent  work, 
but  the  problem  of  economic  preparation  is  so 
universal  that  it  should  be  boldly  attacked  wher- 
ever the  people  are  supporting  a  secondary  school. 
It  is  time  for  the  high  school  to  begin  to  study 

71 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

the  economic  opportunities  in  its  community,  to 
find  out  the  individual  possibilities  of  its  girls, 
to  plan  courses  for  them,  to  investigate  methods 
such  as  that  of  alternating  a  week  in  the  store  or 
factory  with  a  week  in  the  school,  as  is  now  being 
successfully  done  with  boys;  in  a  word,  to  come 
down  from  its  academic  Olympus  and  listen  to 
the  cry  of  the  children. 

Here  is  something  that  happens  every  day. 
A  teacher  —  one  of  those  who  are  real  shepherds 
of  mankind  —  comes  to  the  principal  with  a 
story  like  this:  "Mary  Smith,  one  of  my  best 
pupils,  must  leave  school.  Her  father  is  a  tailor, 
and  business  has  been  poor  for  the  last  year.  He 
has  to  support  four  children  younger  than  Mary, 
so  that  he  cannot  afford  to  clothe  her  and  give 
her  money  for  car-fare  and  lunches."  Mary 
leaves  school  and  goes  to  work  for  two  dollars 
and  a  half  a  week,  at  a  blind-alley  job  that  leads 
to  a  maximum  of  five  or  six  dollars  a  week  and 
puts  a  premium  on  her  downfall.  The  numerous 
experiments  with  continuation  schools  alternat- 
ing school  and  shop,  and  the  various  forms  of 
part-time  work  promise  better  opportunities 
for  such  cases  as  this.  It  is  extremely  important, 
however,  that  all  school  authorities  see  their 
own  part  in  the  solution  of  this  problem.  Is 
72 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  GIRL 

it  not  possible  that  some  manufacturer  or  de- 
partment store  manager  could  be  induced  to  give 
Mary  and  another  girl  a  chance  to  work  on  the 
alternating  plan?  On  a  given  week  Mary  would 
go  to  the  shop  and  her  companion  to  the  school. 
The  next  week  they  would  change  places.  Are 
there  not  also  thousands  of  good  women  in  our 
cities  who  would  take  such  girls  into  their  homes 
to  work  on  the  same  plan?  From  what  we  hear 
we  judge  that  the  servant  problem  could  not 
thereby  be  made  any  worse  than  it  is.  The  school 
could  then  give  these  girls  in  the  alternate  weeks 
a  direct  training  to  make  them  more  efficient  in 
their  various  occupations,  conserve  their  health, 
train  them  for  the  homes  just  ahead,  and  at  the 
same  time  open  to  them  the  inspiration  of  liter- 
ature, art,  history,  science,  language,  or  mathe- 
matics, according  to  their  individual  tastes  and 
abilities.  More  valuable,  perhaps,  than  any  of 
these  would  be  the  social  democracy  and  the 
moral  and  intellectual  stimulus  that  would  per- 
meate the  spirit  of  the  school  as  a  restilt  of  such 
a  practice.  Honest  labor  would  be  ennobled  in 
the  eyes  of  pupils  more  fortunately  circum- 
stanced, social  distinctions  would  be  diminished, 
and  the  interests  and  sympathies  of  all  would  be 
broadened. 

73 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

It  should  be  understood  that  the  above  sug- 
gestion is  not  offered  as  a  patent-medicine  mil- 
lennium for  our  educational  and  social  ills.  It  is 
a  suggestion.  The  school  should  study  the  prob- 
lem and  find  what  plan  of  procedure  will  in  its 
particular  conuntmity  best  meet  the  needs  of 
this  very  considerable  proportion  of  girls. 

Can  any  one  find  a  better  definition  of  educa- 
tion than  this  one  by  William  James:  "Educa- 
tion is  the  organization  of  acquired  habits  of 
action  such  as  will  fit  the  individual  to  his  physi- 
cal and  social  environment"?  Is  not  the  public 
paying  its  good  money  to  bring  to  every  boy  and 
girl  the  best  possible  preparation  for  the  largest 
life  he  or  she  can  live?  Is  there  any  class  of 
society  in  greater  need  of  opportunities  for  the 
improvement  of  its  condition  than  the  daughters 
of  the  poorer  families?  Is  it  rank  socialism  to 
believe  that  every  girl  should  be  kept  in  school 
until  she  is  at  least  sixteen  years  old,  and  if  she 
must  earn  her  own  living  should  receive  technical 
training  that  will  enable  her  to  earn  a  living  wage? 

The  introduction  of  this  type  of  instruction 
into  the  high  schools  would  necessitate  great  care 
that  the  brief  course  aimed  directly  at  wage- 
earning  does  not  short-circuit  the  courses  giving 
more  complete  and  more  broadly  educational 
74 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  GIRL 

advantages.  The  present  four  years'  course  is 
within  the  means  of  many  thousands  of  people, 
particularly  in  the  large  cities,  who  might  not 
understand  its  immensely  greater  relative  value. 
The  high  school  can  in  four  years  give  a  pretty 
thorough  training  in  vocational  lines  along  with 
the  English,  history,  science,  and  mathematics 
necessary  for  a  higher  type  of  business  service 
and  an  intelligent  understanding  of  the  world. 

The  complete  course,  a  unit  in  itself,  planned 
for  those  who  expect  to  finish  their  formal  edu- 
cation and  their  technical  training  in  the  high 
school,  is  the  normal  center  round  which  the  high 
school  should  revolve.  It  is  entirely  possible  that 
important  modifications  of  the  four-year  plan 
may  be  made  within  the  next  few  years.  How- 
ever this  may  be,  it  is  generally  agreed  that  the 
girl's  high  school  days  should  bring  her  pretty 
weU  through  the  age  of  adolescence  and  should 
discover  to  herself  her  particular  aptitudes  and 
possibilities.  The  course  should  be  broad  enough 
to  meet  a  wide  variety  of  individual  needs.  It 
should  be  adapted  to  its  particular  community, 
which  it  should  furnish  with  workers  trained  to 
habits  of  promptness,  accuracy,  and  persever- 
ance, as  applied  not  only  to  learning  lessons  from 
books,  but  also  to  doing  tasks  with  the  hand. 
75 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

If  the  high  school  is  to  do  its  full  duty  it  must 
not  be  satisfied  only  to  conserve  health,  train  for 
efficiency  in  the  home,  and  furnish  a  means  of 
attaining  economic  independence.  It  must  serve 
those  larger  interests  of  full  and  complete  living 
which  broaden  the  intellectual  horizon,  enlarge 
himian  sympathies,  and  bring  to  its  fruition 
the  spiritual  awakening  that  comes  in  the  high- 
school  age.  The  social  and  intellectual  environ- 
ment at  this  critical  age  should  be  favorable  to  a 
sloughing  off  of  the  old  selfish  and  unsympathetic 
motivation  and  the  assumption  of  the  racial  and 
altruistic  interests  so  characteristic  of  the  best 
type  of  womanhood.  To  this  end  the  suggestions 
offered  in  a  previous  chapter  for  making  the 
school  a  working  laboratory  of  social  thought 
would  contribute  directly. 

In  this  connection  also  it  would  be  interesting 
to  ask  a  few  pertinent  questions.  What  is  the 
spirit  of  your  girls'  high  school  ?  First,  is  it  peda- 
gogically  honest  and  sane?  Do  pupils  study  from 
interest  or  compulsion  ?  Are  hard  tasks  conquered 
or  played  with  and  evaded?  Do  teachers  teach 
or  just  hear  recitations  —  or  do  they  lecture  ?  Fine 
word,  that,  —  gives  one  a  sense  of  affinity  with 
Emerson  and  the  other  transcendentalists.  Is 
the  education  by  platoon  or  by  person?  Is  the 
76 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  GIRL 

course  of  study  or  the  pupil  the  first  considera- 
tion? Second,  is  the  school  socially  democratic? 
What  determines  popularity,  worth  or  wealth? 
Would  the  fine  student  in  gingham  be  patronized 
as  a  Latin  "pony"  or  entertained  as  a  compan- 
ion? Do  the  girls  dress  like  stage  pictures  or  like 
just  girls?  Is  their  hair  their  own  or  "the  dowry 
of  a  second  head"?  Is  there  a  democracy  of  all 
the  girls  of  the  school? 

The  course  of  study,  as  frequently  suggested 
above,  must  be  so  administered  as  to  be  easily 
adaptable  to  individual  needs.  It  should  provide 
Latin,  Greek,  German,  French,  mathematics, 
science,  history,  literature,  and  so  forth,  for  the 
girl  of  scholarly  ability  and  ambition,  and  plenty 
of  handwork  and  practical  training  for  the  large 
majority  who  have  no  distinctively  intellectual 
interests.  It  should  require  both  mental  and 
manual  work  of  every  girl  throughout  her  course, 
even  if  this  innovation  makes  it  necessary  to  add 
an  hour  or  two  to  the  school  day.  It  should  give 
every  girl  the  fullest  instruction  she  can  assim- 
ilate in  oral  and  written  English  and  in  the  mas- 
terpieces of  our  literature.  It  should  require  of 
all  some  acquaintance  with  scientific  principles  as 
applied  to  daily  life,  some  familiarity  with  busi- 
ness practice  and  elementary  accounting,  and  an 

77 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

introduction  to  the  economic  and  governmental 
activities  of  organized  society.  Whether  or  not 
we  favor  woman  suffrage,  we  must  recognize  the 
probability  of  its  rapid  extension.  Woman's  be- 
wilderment in  political  matters  is  due  to  inex- 
perience, and  it  is  a  problem  for  the  public  high 
school  to  give  her  the  intelligent  comprehension 
of  civic  matters  that  will  make  her  a  most  salu- 
tary influence  in  our  political  life.  Woman  needs 
intellectual  culture,  but  she  also  needs  abounding 
health;  she  needs  an  introduction  to  the  riches  of 
science,  mathematics,  history,  language,  and  lit- 
erature, but  she  also  needs  to  know  the  science, 
art,  and  economics  of  the  home.  She  often  needs 
to  go  to  college,  but  she  more  often  needs  to  earn 
a  living  wage  that  shall  deliver  her  from  the  ever- 
present  temptation  to  sell  her  soul  for  temporary 
bodily  comfort;  and  pervading  all  of  her  school 
training  she  needs  a  social  democracy  and  a 
sympathetic  inteUigence  that  shall  make  easier 
her  task  as  the  moral  and  spiritual  conservator 
of  the  progress  of  the  race. 

Is  it  not  true  that  — 

(i)  The  public  is  paying  for  the  high  school? 

(2)  The  public  is,  therefore,  entitled  to  the 
largest  service  the  school  can  render  to 
all  the  people? 

78 


THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  GIRL 

(3)  The  high  school's  largest  possible  service, 
so  far  as  the  girls  are  concerned,  is  to  con- 
serve their  health,  train  them  for  house- 
hold efficiency  and  economic  independence, 
and  bring  them  into  touch  with  the  larger 
social  and  intellectual  interests  of  himian- 
ity? 


IV 

THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  COLLEGE 

The  last  few  years  have  witnessed  a  somewhat 
acrimonious  controversy  between  the  high  school 
and  the  college.  This  discussion  arose  as  the 
high  school  began  to  be  conscious  of  itself  and  to 
recognize  its  democratic  obligations  to  the  com- 
munity that  was  supporting  it  as  contrasted  with 
its  obHgations  to  the  traditions  that  had  deter- 
mined the  content  and  method  of  its  course. 
There  can  be  only  one  result  in  such  a  dispute 
between  a  small,  essentially  aristocratic  body 
and  a  democratic  institution,  rooted  for  its  very 
sustenance  in  the  great  mass  of  the  people.  Pro- 
gress toward  a  mutually  satisfactory  adjustment 
of  the  difl5culty  has  naturally  been  more  rapid 
in  the  democratic  West,  where  its  State  univer- 
sities, because  of  their  essential  democracy,  and 
the  great  Chicago  University,  with  its  far- 
visioned  sense  of  realities,  have  opened  the  way 
for  a  solution  that  will  leave  the  high  school  free 
to  perform  its  largest  service  to  all  the  people 
and  at  the  same  time  to  give  adequate  prepara- 
80 


HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  COLLEGE 

tiem  to  the  relatively  insignificant  number  of 
pupils  headed  coUegeward. 

In  contrast  the  strife  has  been  most  bitter  in 
New  England  and  the  Middle  States  of  the  East. 
Harvard  and  Columbia  Universities  have,  in- 
deed, done  much  to  prepare  the  way  for  a  solu- 
tion of  the  difficulty,  and  nearly  every  coeduca- 
tional college  and  nearly  every  college  for  men 
has  made  important  concessions  in  each  succes- 
sive announcement  of  requirements.  The  Bastile 
of  educational  Bourbonism  has  been  the  woman's 
college,  which,  largely  because  of  the  fact  that 
such  facilities  throughout  the  country  are  so 
inadequate  that  every  year  many  more  pupils 
apply  for  admission  than  can  possibly  be  accom- 
modated, has  been  able  to  insist  upon  a  program 
extremely  narrow  in  its  pedantic  adherence  to 
tradition,  and  minute  in  its  picayunish  exactions. 
The  few  high  schools  which  have  specialized  in 
preparation  for  these  institutions  have,  therefore, 
been  driven  far  away  from  the  line  of  their  larg- 
est democratic  service. 

Generally  speaking,  however,  it  is  safe  to  say 
that  all  over  the  East  the  high  school,  large 
or  small,  is  still  failing  in  its  broadest  service 
because  of  the  incubus  of  college  domination. 
This  is  true,  first,  because  its  course  of  study  is 
8i 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

limited  almost  exclusively  to  the  narrow  range 
of  subjects  accepted  for  college  entrance;  second, 
because  the  methods  and  the  scope  of  its  instruc- 
tion, even  within  this  cramped  curriculum,  are 
determined  by  college  entrance  examinations 
made  by  specialists  whose  point  of  view  is  not 
the  welfare  of  the  student,  but  the  requirements 
for  advanced  study  of  their  various  subjects. 

The  course  of  study  is  limited  to  subjects 
accepted  for  college  entrance  because  in  the  vast 
majority  of  moderate-sized  towns  only  one  course 
is  possible  without  too  great  expense,  and  the 
college  preparatory  course  is  given  because  it  is 
demanded  by  the  most  influential  portion  of  the 
community.  Public  pride  in  the  single  boy  who 
enters  college  from  the  local  school  is  oblivious 
of  the  twenty  who  have  been  driven  out  in  dis- 
appointment by  a  course  that  failed  to  grip  them 
with  a  vital  interest.  Economical  school  boards 
veto  expensive  innovations  with  the  argiunent 
that  the  school  now  prepares  for  college,  and  the 
one  narrow  course  for  all  is  continued  in  the 
belief  that  Latin  and  mathematics  will  develop 
a  mental  storage  battery  that  will  turn  the  wheels 
of  modern  industry. 

In  communities  where  several  courses  of  study 
are  offered,  the  results  are  often  much  the  same. 
82 


HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  COLLEGE 

At  their  entrance  to  the  high  school  pupils  are 
very  uncertain  of  their  aims  in  life.  Adolescent 
imitation  favors  the  "college  preparatory" 
course,  and  boyish  snobbery  is  proud  to  study 
Latin.  In  half-unconscious  acceptance  of  the 
tradition  that  the  college  preparatory  course  is 
best,  teachers  turn  thereto  all  who  have  not 
decided  on  some  definite  pursuit.  This,  at  least, 
will  guard  against  unpreparedness  if,  two  or 
three  years  later,  they  wish  to  enter  a  higher 
institution.  Moreover,  in  turning  every  one 
collegeward,  the  high-school  principal  is  safe- 
guarding his  own  interests,  for  if  one  of  his  grad- 
uates has  not  had  the  particular  subjects  de- 
manded for  college  entrance  the  principal  must 
face  certain  criticism  and  possible  loss  of  position. 
Perhaps  most  important  of  all  in  limiting  the 
secondary  course  to  college  preparatory  subjects 
is  the  power  of  tradition.  High  school  teachers 
are,  and  ought  to  be,  college  graduates.  The 
richness  of  their  own  intellectual  lives,  however, 
often  blinds  them  to  the  needs  of  the  masses.  / 
They  make  a  fetish  of  the  subjects  they  love,/ 
and  see  in  foreign  languages,  algebra,  and  geom-l 
etry  the  only  way  of  intellectual  salvation.  They 
fear  the  ascendancy  of  practical  over  cultural 
aims,  and  feel  that  in  encouraging  college  ideals 

83 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

they  are  uplifting  their  pupils.  The  conservative 
public  reverences  the  gospel  of  the  traditional 
subjects  and  the  authority  of  the  college  elders. 
Ideals  of  high  scholarship,  of  unquestioned  value 
for  the  few,  are  set  as  the  standard  for  the  many, 
and  the  inexorable  law  of  the  survival  of  the 
fittest  denies  the  opportunities  of  public  educa- 
tion to  those  who  cannot  learn  the  language  of 
the  monastery. 

How  closely  the  schools  are  limited  to  the 
traditional  college  entrance  subjects  may  be  seen 
by  a  glance  at  the  report  of  the  Regents'  exami- 
nations of  New  York  State,  which  are  taken  by 
practically  all  students  in  all  subjects.  It  would 
seem  that  if  ninety-five  per  cent  of  our  young 
people  are  to  complete  their  education  in  the 
public  high  school,  there  should  be  ample  recog- 
nition of  the  fundamentals  of  civil  government 
and  of  the  principles  of  economics.  These  sub- 
jects, however,  are  practically  eliminated  from 
a  great  number  of  schools  because  they  are 
not  generally  accepted  as  imits  for  college  en- 
trance. 

The  report  of  the  New  York  State  Education 
Department  shows  that  in  the  history  and  social- 
science  group  the  number  of  papers  written  in 
January  and  Jime,  19 13,  was  as  follows:  — 
84 


HIGH   SCHOOL  AND  COLLEGE 

Ancient  history 16,958 

All  other  history,  except  American     .    .    .  15,639 

American  history  and  civics       13,995 

Civics 555 

Economics       i)27S 

While  the  third  group  named  above  is  called 
American  history  and  civics,  it  is  to  all  intents 
merely  a  history  course.  The  civics  is  a  poor 
relation  inheriting  only  the  accidental  attention 
that  can  most  easily  be  spared. 

The  mentors  of  education  in  college  chairs 
possibly  can  give  reasons  why  such  subjects  as 
civics,  sociology,  and  economics  should  not  be 
accepted  as  entrance  units.  One  of  them,  the 
dean  of  a  great  college,  recently  revealed  the 
reason  why  every  college  has  so  many  kinks  in 
its  requirements  that  only  the  most  careful  study 
of  extremely  complicated  English  will  disclose 
their  true  inwardness.  He  said  that  his  college 
demanded  many  things  of  which  neither  he  nor 
the  faculty  as  a  whole  approved.  " But,"  said  he, 
"you  know  every  professor  has  a  pet  scheme  of 

his  own.  The  professor  of ology  knows  that 

if  he  opposes  the  crotchet  of  the  professor  of 

ism,  his  own  schedule  will  be  reciprocally 

smashed." 

Any  attempt  to  extend  the  number  of  subjects 
or  to  change  the  scope  of  existing  requirements 

85 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

for  college  entrance  is  met  with  suspicious  scru- 
tiny on  the  part  of  many  of  the  colleges.  Even 
the  authority  of  the  New  York  State  Education 
Department  is  powerless  to  add  or  subtract  one 
jot  or  tittle  in  the  matter  of  college  entrance 
units.  By  its  dispensation  of  public  money  this 
department  can  dictate  courses  of  study,  the 
qualifications  of  teachers,  and  the  methods  and 
scope  of  instruction  to  the  high  schools;  but  the 
necessity  of  having  its  credentials  accepted  for 
entrance  has  generally  forced  it  meekly  to  follow 
college  suggestion.  Hence  the  Regents'  examina- 
tions, by  which  the  high-school  pupils  of  the 
State  are  measured,  are  really  college  entrance 
examinations  in  another  form. 

The  single  exception  to  the  State  department's 
usual  subservience  to  college  domination  has 
produced  a  row  over  the  first-year  high  school 
course  in  biology.  No  action  of  the  department 
has  met  with  more  general  approval  on  the  part 
of  public-school  men  than  the  introduction  of  this 
course.  The  high  Olympian  arrogance  of  the 
majority  of  the  colleges  is  shown  by  the  actual 
experience  of  a  high  school  principal,  who,  in  his 
ignorance,  proposed  that  some  of  his  pupils  offer 
this  course  as  an  entrance  unit.  In  substance  the 
following  conversation  ensued  between  the  prin- 
86 


HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  COLLEGE 

cipal  and  the  head  of  the  college  department  of 
biology:  — 

College  Professor.  "We  cannot  accept  that 
course  as  one  of  the  six  additional  units  required 
for  the  science  course." 

Principal.  "Why  not,  Professor?" 

Professor.  "It  is  little  more  than  an  advanced 
nature-study  course.  It  has  not  the  dignity  that 
a  subject  should  have  for  college  entrance. 
Besides,  the  pupils  are  so  yoimg  when  they  take 
it  that  they  cannot  possibly  get  the  training  re- 
quired as  a  basis  for  our  courses  in  biology." 

Principal.  "Don't  you  think.  Professor,  that 
the  first-year  pupil  in  high  school  ought  to  be 
given  an  insight  into  scientific  methods?" 

Professor.  "Unquestionably  he  should." 

Principal.  "What  would  you  suggest  in  place 
of  biology?  " 

Professor.  "Oh,  the  biology  is  all  right  so  far 
as  that  is  concerned.  Indeed,  I  think  it  is  the 
best,  perhaps  the  only,  thing  you  can  give  him." 

Principal.  "Yes,  it  teaches  him  to  do  things 
with  his  own  hands,  see  things  with  his  own  eyes, 
and  tell  the  truth  in  his  own  language  about  what 
he  has  done  and  seen." 

Professor.  "I  agree  with  you  that  it  is  a  most 
valuable  course,  but  I  never  will  agree  to  accept 

87 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

it.  We  can^t  count  on  the  pupil's  knowing  any- 
thing as  a  basis  for  our  college  courses." 

Principal.  "Which  do  you  want,  on  the  part 
of  your  freshmen,  Professor,  a  certain  knowledge 
content  on  which  you  can  base  advanced  courses, 
or  the  best  training  that  the  individual  boys  and 
girls  can  have?" 

Professor.  "By  all  means,  we  want  the  train- 
ing." 

Principal.  "You  say,  then,  you  want  your 
freshman  to  have  had  the  best  training  possible 
at  each  stage  of  his  development.  You  admit 
emphatically  that  nothing  is  so  valuable  at  his 
entrance  to  high  school  as  the  course  in  biology, 
yet  you  refuse  to  accept  that  element  of  his  train- 
ing as  a  imit  for  college  entrance." 

Professor.  "Yes,  if  you  choose  to  put  it  that 
way." 

Having  demolished  the  professorial  argument, 
the  principal  was  obliged  to  submit  to  the  pro- 
fessorial despotism,  make  a  separate  class  for 
seven  pupils,  and  give  them  a  course  in  zoology 
magnanimously  outlined  by  this  same  professor, 
because  those  few  boys  had  to  have  an  additional 
subject  that  the  college  would  accept.  Then  the 
pupils  found  after  entrance  that  they  were  put 
by  this  same  professor  into  classes  in  zoology 
88 


HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  COLLEGE 

with  pupils  to  whom  the  subject  was  absolutely 
new. 

Our  present  college-dictated  high  school  course, 
then,  is  ill  adapted  to  the  real  needs  of  the 
people,  in  that  it  places  the  emphasis  on  the 
wrong  subjects,  and  practically  eliminates  many 
that  would  be  of  the  greatest  practical  value  in 
the  lives  of  the  vast  majority  of  pupils  whose 
only  opportunity  for  higher  education  is  in  the 
public  high  school.  No  less  destructive  of  the 
welfare  of  the  masses  is  the  limitation  in  method 
of  treatment  of  the  subjects  taught. 

Lack  of  space  will  not  permit  a  detailed  analy- 
sis of  the  evils  caused  by  absolute  prescription  of 
the  quality  and  quantity  of  work  to  be  done  in 
each  subject.  Both  are  measured  by  examina- 
tions too  often  set  by  pedantic  specialists,  who 
doubtless  know  enough  about  the  subjects  but 
who  know  boys  and  girls  not  at  all.  It  makes 
no  difference  whether  these  examinations  come 
from  a  State  department,  a  college  entrance 
board,  or  direct  from  an  individual  college.  In 
any  case  the  evil  is  the  same.  The  teacher  must 
strain  every  nerve  to  cover  the  groimd  measured 
by  the  examination.  Excursions  into  fields  not 
traversed  by  the  examination  road  are  absolutely 
prohibited;  applications  to  the  real  interests  of 

89 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

live  boys  and  girls  must  not  interfere  with  reach- 
ing the  goal  in  the  prescribed  time;  observation 
along  the  route  is  valueless  if  it  does  not  con- 
tribute to  the  quantity  of  examinable  material 
tied  into  packages  and  labeled  so  as  to  be  easily 
reached  when  demanded  under  the  stress  of  a 
three  hours'  test.  Teachers  very  well  know  that 
their  success  is  measured,  not  by  their  inspira- 
tional power  nor  by  the  unconscious  tuition 
which  their  personality  may  impart,  but  by  the 
percentage  of  their  pupils  who  make  a  creditable 
showing.  Thus  they  become  skillful  in  taking 
tithes  of  mint  and  anise  and  cumin,  and  learn  to 
neglect  the  laws  of  spiritual  growth  and  broad 
human  sympathy. 

In  physics  and  chemistry  it  is  impossible  to  go 
into  the  industries  of  a  city  and  see  the  practi- 
cal application  of  the  principles  studied.  Much 
more  than  the  allotted  time  is  needed  to  make 
accurate  quantitative  measurements  in  perform- 
ing the  prescribed  thirty-five  experiments  and  in 
preparing  notebooks  that  will  pass  the  college 
teacher's  inspection.  So  all  the  pupils  in  high 
school  science  laboriously  potter  with  the  laws 
of  falling  bodies,  moments  of  force,  ions,  electrol- 
ysis, molecular  weights,  qualitative  analysis, 
conjugation  in  algae,  xylem  and  phloem,  spore 
90 


HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  COLLEGE 

formation  and  fungi,  and  similar  theoretical  mat- 
ters, hardly  one  of  which  will  give  any  practical 
insight  into  the  scientific  meaning  of  the  every- 
day affairs  in  which  their  lives  will  be  spent.  Of 
the  great  mass  of  pupils  who  are  being  forced 
through  this  meaningless  grind  about  five  per 
cent  will  go  to  college,  and  of  those  who  go  per- 
haps one  half  will  take  the  advanced  science 
courses  for  which  college-dictated  science  in  the 
high  school  is  "a  foundation." 

Here  and  there  a  school,  through  some  peculiar 
good  fortune,  has  been  able  to  experiment  with  a 
type  of  science  aimed  solely  to  develop  scientific 
habits  of  thought  and  to  furnish  a  scientific  inter- 
pretation of  the  pupil's  environment.  Immedi- 
ately such  courses  have  become  centers  of  ab- 
sorbing interest.  Instead  of  dread  and  aversion 
the  pupils  have  attacked  them  with  enthusiasm 
and  delight.  Instead  of  failures  that  approached 
fiifty  per  cent,  success  has  followed  these  courses, 
although  they  have  been  in  no  way  less  exacting 
than  the  deadly  measurements  and  theories  dic- 
tated by  professional  obtuseness  to  all  considera- 
tions outside  of  those  measurements  and  theories. 

In  this  modernized  science  emphasis  is  laid, 
not  upon  man  as  man,  forces  as  forces,  and 
agencies  as  agencies,  but  upon  the  reciprocal 

91 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

relations  of  man  and  his  natural  and  artificial 
environment,  upon  their  actions  and  reactions, 
upon  the  adaptations  of  natural  laws  to  man, 
and  his  response  to  these  laws.  Thus  science 
becomes  the  tool  with  which  the  pupil  attacks 
the  day's  work,  rather  than  an  abstraction  pos- 
sessed of  some  mysterious  value  known  only  to 
the  initiated.  Thus  there  is  added  to  the  pupils* 
growing  interest  the  ever-widening  appeal  of 
insight  into  the  mysteries  of  his  environment, 
whether  it  be  the  farm  with  its  absolute  depend- 
ence upon  the  laws  and  forces  of  nature,  or  the 
city  with  its  complicated  and  artificial  mastery 
of  mechanics  and  its  more  or  less  successful  con- 
trol of  social  and  hygienic  conditions,  all  so 
inevitably  registered  in  the  sickness  and  death- 
rate. 

Obviously  the  new  science  can  be  no  mauso- 
leum of  thirty-five  sacred  experiments  of  practi- 
cally unvarying  content.  If  it  must  interpret 
environment,  it  must  take  its  problem  from 
environment  rather  than  from  any  theory  of  a 
complete  and  logical  synthesis  of  the  subject.  It 
must  discuss  with  due  relation  to  their  local 
applicability  such  concrete  and  practical  matters 
as  the  prevention  of  epidemics,  the  spread  of 
disease  by  flies  and  mosquitoes,  sewage,  the  care 
92 


HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  COLLEGE 

of  trees  and  plants,  fertilizers,  the  nutritive 
values  of  foods,  the  dangers  and  the  detection 
of  food  adulteration,  the  analysis  of  water,  the 
removal  of  stains,  labor-saving  devices,  particu- 
larly those  most  useful  to  the  community,  such 
as  the  gas  engine,  the  steam  engine,  electricity  in 
its  immediate  and  prospective  relation  to  daily 
life,  the  chemistry  and  physics  of  the  local  indus- 
tries, and  as  many  other  matters  of  daily  obser- 
vations as  the  time  at  its  disposal  will  permit. 

High-school  mathematics  is  limited  by  college 
entrance  requirements  almost  entirely  to  abstract 
theory  and  manipulative  gymnastics.  The  time 
of  the  pupils  is  wasted  in  intricate  complex  frac- 
tions, expert  factoring,  indeterminate  equations, 
complex  numbers,  quadratic  puzzles,  and  the 
binomial  theorem.  This  is  supposed  to  contribute 
to  mental  discipline,  whereas  for  the  most  part 
it  contributes  to  facility  in  guessing,  and  to 
technical  skill  of  little  worth.  The  commercial 
teacher  is  driven  to  despair  because  of  inaccurate 
addition,  subtraction,  multiplication,  and  divi- 
sion; while  the  mathematics  teacher,  who  is 
tediously  belaboring  his  flock  over  the  pons 
asinorum  or  the  mons  professorum,  accepts  with 
slight  discount  any  result  that  is  correct  in 
theory. 

93 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

The  real  mathematics  of  practical  life,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  a  first  essential  to  every  boy  and 
girl  for  two  reasons;  first,  because  it  is  the  best 
possible  medium  for  teaching  habits  of  accuracy; 
and  second,  because  the  subject  itself  is  an  inevit- 
able means  to  the  ends  of  daily  life. 

The  habit  of  accuracy,  of  truthfulness,  of 
meeting  issues  squarely,  demands  the  elimina- 
tion of  guesswork  in  both  theory  and  practice. 
And  if  the  pupil  is  working  at  the  mathematical 
basis  of  everyday  life  he  soon  comes  to  under- 
stand the  inevitableness  of  fundamental  laws, 
and  the  necessity  of  conforming  to  them.  As  he 
gains  facility  in  adapting  the  mathematical  laws 
in  the  same  way  that  he  applies  scientific  princi- 
ples to  his  daily  problems,  he  comes  to  delight  in 
his  mastery  of  the  material  world  through  his 
knowledge  of  truth. 

If  he  is  to  profit  thus,  he  must  begin  with  his 
immediate  environment.  The  shop,  the  store, 
the  farm,  household  accounts,  the  family  budget, 
—  all  furnish  almost  universal  applications  of 
mathematics.  Ratio,  direct  and  inverse,  as  ap- 
plied in  optics,  electricity,  and  gravitation;  wa- 
ter and  gas  pressure,  strength  of  materials,  and 
dozens  of  other  applications  will  be  found  in 
correlating  the  mathematics  with  the  rejuvenated 
94 


HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  COLLEGE 

science  of  the  world  in  which  the  common  man 
lives.  The  representation  of  statistics  such  as  the 
expenses  and  profits  of  a  business  through  suc- 
cessive months  by  means  of  cross-section  paper 
is  a  real  and  valuable  problem.  Similar  treatment 
of  other  subjects  of  dispute  woidd  settle  many 
questions  that  are'  only  obscured  by  dogmatic 
contradictions. 

The  use  of  a  representative  letter  for  an  un- 
wieldy decimal  and  the  universal  truth  expressed 
in  a  formula  are  really  the  short  cuts  of  abridged 
calculations.  When  they  appeal  to  a  pupil  as  a 
method  of  solving  real  problems,  instead  of  as 
abstractions  to  become  valuable  in  a  vague  con- 
dition of  bliss  beyond  the  registrar,  he  will  be 
glad  to  employ  them.  The  construction  of  a  right 
angle  at  a  given  point  will  be  a  problem  of  interest 
when  by  it  the  boy  must  fit  a  board,  or  the  girl 
a  piece  of  cloth.  The  magic  of  a  slide  rule,  of  a 
logarithmic  table,  of  a  computing-machine  will 
be  welcome  when  it  quickly  reaches  the  result 
with  machine-like  precision.  It  must  be  admitted 
that  this  is  all  practical,  that  it  does  not  include 
pure  mathematics.  At  least,  however,  there  is 
reasonable  hope  that  it  can  be  accomplished  by 
the  rank  and  file  of  high  school  pupils;  while  the 
overwhelming  failures  in  our  present  college- 

95 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

dictated  course,  on  a  standard  so  low  as  to  be  a 
condemnation  of  any  mathematical  work,  are  am- 
ple evidence  that  the  present  course  is  a  failure.^ 
Whatever  else  the  school  does,  it  can  make 
sure  that  its  pupils  can  perform  the  four  funda- 
mental operations  in  all  useful  forms  of  numbers 
with  rapidity  and  accuracy,  both  by  use  of  the 
pencil  and  by  the  old  mental  arithmetic  methods. 
No  amount  of  theory  is  excuse  for  failure  here. 
The  school  should  feel  it  a  disgrace  for  its  gradu- 
ates to  fail  on  everyday  problems,  such  as  the 
amount  of  radiating  surface  required  to  heat  a 
room,  of  paper  to  cover  its  walls,  the  graphic 
representation  of  statistics,  and  the  computation 
of  interest  on  a  fluctuating  bank  account  by 
means  of  an  interest  table.  Its  graduates  will  not 

*  The  report  of  the  New  York  State  Education  Department 
shows  the  following  percentage  of  pupils  passing  in  mathe- 
matical subjects  for  January  and  Jime,  1913.  Sixty  per  cent 
is  the  passing  mark:  — 

Advanced  arithmetic 36.2 

Elementary  algebra 71.5 

Intermediate  algebra 64.5 

Advanced  algebra 74.4 

Plane  geometry 59.8 

Solid  geometry 76.2 

Plane  trigonometry 64.9 

Spheric  trigonometry 64  6 

Total 67.1 

96 


HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  COLLEGE 

thus  fail  when  it  leaves  pure  mathematics  to  the 
college,  where  it  belongs,  and  devotes  itself  to  its 
own  task,  the  development  of  habitual  accuracy 
in  the  mathematical  concerns  of  daily  life. 

In  French  and  German  there  is  little  oppor- 
tunity to  acquire  a  workable  power  over  these 
languages  that  would  be  of  real  use  in  Paris  or 
Berlin  or  in  their  miniatures  in  our  American 
cities.  These  living  languages  of  our  greatest 
contemporaries  must  be  taught  as  if  they  had 
been  the  speech  of  peoples  buried  under  the  lava 
of  twenty  centuries.  The  methods  pursued  in  the 
ancient  classics  for  entirely  different  purposes 
have  limited  our  study  of  German  and  French 
to  the  translation  of  a  set  number  of  pages  of 
literary  masterpieces,  the  acquisition  of  a  literary 
vocabulary,  and  the  accurate  mastery  for  exami- 
nation of  all  the  intricacies  of  grammar.  Yet  it  is 
possible,  without  using  more  time  than  is  at 
present  allotted  to  these  languages,  to  develop  a 
facility  in  their  use  that  will  have  a  direct,  prac- 
tical value. 

In  Latin  and  Greek  there  is  little  opportunity 
to  come  into  sympathetic  touch  with  the  great 
civilizations  of  antiquity,  to  appreciate  the  mar- 
velous beauty  of  Greek  pantheism  through  my- 
thology, or  to  comprehend  the  world-conquering 

97 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

spirit  of  the  Roman  language,  institutions,  and 
laws.  The  splendid  opportunities  for  training 
the  powers  of  observation  and  discrimination, 
and  for  developing  originality  and  accuracy  of 
statement  in  English,  are  thrown  away  under  the 
goad  of  an  overloaded  course  and  an  enormous 
technical  requirement.  The  time  must  be  occu- 
pied almost  solely  in  preparation  for  a  formal 
test  on  such  minutise  as  the  principal  parts  of 
'O/sao),  the  mastery  of  grammatical  exceptions, 
the  writing  of  bad  Latin  and  worse  Greek,  and 
the  crucifixion  of  the  mother  tongue  in  the  literal 
translation  of  foreign  idioms. 
h  In  history  mere  questions  of  fact  occupy  most 
of  the  time.  The  pupil  is  seldom  taught  the 
relationship  between  the  social  conflict  in  Rome 
and  the  American  trust  problem  of  to-day.  He 
is  not  led  to  see  that  the  real  origin  of  the 
American  revolt  against  George  III  is  to  be  found 
in  the  English  revolt  against  Charles  I.  The  boy 
must  enimierate  the  causes  of  the  Punic  Wars 
and  of  the  American  Rebellion,  but  need  not  see 
the  clash  of  two  civilizations  nor  the  inter- 
relation between  economic  and  political  forces  in 
our  great  civil  strife. 

Nowhere  else,  however,  has  the  stiff  formality 
of  an  examinable  reqmrement  been  so  fatal  as  in 
98 


HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  COLLEGE 

that  most  important  of  subjects,  the  mother 
tongue.  College  teachers  have  written  the 
courses,  trained  the  teachers,  set  the  examina- 
tions, and  execrated  the  results.  Instead  of  in- 
spiring in  the  pupils  a  discriminating  apprecia- 
tion of  our  glorious  literature  that  would  be  a 
continuous  means  of  education  and  an  unfailing 
resource  against  ennui,  our  teaching  has  pro- 
duced the  conviction  that  Burke  is  a  bore, 
Addison  a  prude,  and  Milton  a  pedant.  Instead 
of  training  pupils  to  express  the  experiences  and 
emotions  of  daily  life  or  to  write  an  intelligent 
application  for  a  job,  we  have  killed  off  any 
interest  in  Ivanhoe  that  might  have  survived  the 
minute  class  memorizing  and  analysis  by  com- 
pelling them  to  write  five  hundred  words  about 
the  tournament  at  Ashby.  We  have  given  them 
literary  texts  in  which  every  allusion  was  ex- 
plained, and  have  forced  them  to  memorize  the 
notes  before  they  were  permitted  to  enjoy  the 
story.  We  have  made  simple  pieces  of  literature 
that  they  could  have  enjoyed  alone  the  subjects 
of  such  close  scrutiny,  chasing  each  fugitive  word 
back  to  the  Tower  of  Babel,  that  they  have  wel- 
comed the  examination  as  a  release.  And  when 
their  red-inked  essays,  reproducing  the  "Ring 
Story,"  from  the  Merchant  of  Venice,  and  the 

99 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

"Story  of  Elaine,"  have  been  handed  back  for 
rewriting,  our  boys  and  girls  have  charged  the 
abomination  to  Shakespeare  and  Tennyson  and 
have  sworn  a  solemn,  "Never  again,"  against 
every  author  buried  in  the  graveyard  of  college 
entrance  English. 

For  all  this  the  college  and  the  college  alone  is 
responsible.  About  1890  it  began  to  be  seriously 
argued  that  something  more  was  needed  in  the 
study  of  English  than  the  canons  of  rhetoric  and 
the  lives  of  authors.  The  obvious  thing  to  do  was 
to  study  masterpieces.  How?  Why,  just  as  the 
masterpieces  of  Latin  and  Greek  were  studied,  of 
course.  At  first  the  colleges  prescribed  with  great 
exactness  the  texts  to  be  covered  and  refused 
to  accept  any  substitutes.  Gradually  the  list 
was  extended  and  the  privilege  of  choice  within 
definite  limits  was  grudgingly  granted.  Still  the 
college  examination  has  continued  to  be  the 
criterion  of  success,  and  methods  that  achieved 
vicious  ends  in  spite  of  their  good  intentions  have 
become  so  ingrained  in  the  pedagogical  subcon- 
sciousness that  it  will  take  years  to  arrive  at  a 
sane  procedure.  The  college  examination  has 
asked  minute  questions  covering  every  allusion, 
so  that  the  teachers  have  been  compelled  to 
destroy  all  literary  enjo3Tiient  in  preparation  for 
100 


HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  COLLEGE 

an  examination.  It  has  based  its  composition  on 
the  blackened  skeleton  of  the  literature  it  has 
murdered,  and  then  has  complained  that  the 
writing  of  students  lacked  style,  force,  and  ac- 
curacy. 

Even  if  we  had  the  greatest  freedom  to  work  , 
out  our  English  courses  we  must  admit  that  the  / 
problem  would  be  a  difficult  one.  Possibly  there 
would  be  a  somewhat  general  agreement  that  our 
aim  should  be,  first,  to  secure  power  in  both  oral 
and  written  expression ;  second,  to  develop  a  dis- 
criminating taste  for  literature;  third,  to  secure^ 
some  appreciative  acquaintance  with  the  best 
literature. 

Toward  the  attainment  of  these  ends  some 
progress  has  been  made  recently  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  the  innovations  have  been  accepted  for 
college  entrance  only  as  improved  results  have 
shown  the  value  of  methods  employed  by  heretic 
teachers  at  their  peril.  Within  the  last  half- 
dozen  years  it  has  dawned  upon  teachers  of  Eng- 
lish that  man  is  a  talking  animal.  Along  with 
other  practical  considerations  we  have  come  to 
realize  that  the  demand  for  reasonably  accurate 
oral  speech  is  much  larger  than  for  written 
expression.  Available  oral  language  resources 
are  heavy  assets  against  the  emergency  liabilities 

lOI 


I    lUM  A  tJ>\ 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

of  everyday  life.  Slowly  we  have  grasped  the 
relation  between  this  outstanding  truth  and  the 
duty  of  the  school.  At  last  we  are  giving  pupils 
a  chance  to  talk  in' school  as  they  must,  by  some 
shift,  learn  to  talk  after  leaving  school.  With  a 
definite  problem,  namely,  to  convey  to  the  listen- 
ers something  that  they  must  get  straight  in 
order  to  make  their  own  next  move,  the  young 
student  feels  the  compelling  power  of  the  spoken 
word  or  gets  the  reaction  from  its  blimdering  use. 
Into  this  oral  attainment  must  enter  the  elements 
of  good  articulation,  distinct  enimciation,  correct 
emphasis,  inflection,  pitch,  tone,  etc.,  in  giving 
expression  to  literature  and  to  daily  speech. 

This  everyday  habit  must  affect  written 
expression  as  well.  We  have  been  working  at  this 
longer,  and  probably  our  results  are  generally 
better  —  at  least,  we  have  discovered  a  good 
many  things  not  to  do.  Under  college  direction 
we  have  been  industriously  rehashing  the  ca- 
davers of  the  books  on  the  prescribed  list  and 
as  surely  establishing  in  the  minds  of  our  pupils 
a  list  of  proscribed  books  and  authors.  We  have 
inscribed  red-ink  trespass  signs  upon  square  rods 
of  wastebasket  scenery  and  indelible  crow's-feet 
and  acidulous  droops  upon  our  own  faces.  We 
have  distended  monosyllabic  ideas  into  galleys  of 

I02 


HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  COLLEGE 

osity  and  ation  by  our  demands  for  four  hundred 
words  on  "What  I  See  in  George  Eliot's  Face." 
The  best  teachers  have  now  learned  that  in  both 
oral  and  written  composition  the  surest  sources 
of  interest  and  the  greatest  possibilities  of  growth 
lie  in  the  pupil's  saying  or  writing,  as  he  will  all 
his  life,  something  that  he  really  wants  to  say  or 
write.  Our  problem,  then,  is  to  discover  individual 
interests;  to  correlate  with  these  interests  all 
of  the  other  subjects  of  the  school;  through  this 
correlation  to  enlist  the  assistance  of  other  mem- 
bers of  the  faculty;  and  to  develop  in  our  pupils 
the  best  possible  habits  of  oral  and  written  ex- 
pression. 

If  we  are  to  meet  the  test  of  improving  the 
habitual  use  of  English  in  speech  and  writing,  it 
will  be  necessary  to  do  more  than  hand  back 
laboriously  marked  themes.  We  must  work  with 
the  pupil  in  conference.  He  must  attack  prob- 
lems of  expression  in  the  same  spirit  with  which 
he  attacks  problems  in  mathematics.  We  do  not 
ask  him  to  find  the  coefficient  of  a  to  the  nth 
without  assistance  and  then  red-ink  his  results. 
We  work  out  the  formula  with  him.  In  the 
science  laboratory,  also,  we  direct  his  effort,  and 
school  boards  and  principals  have  conceded  that 
additional  help  is  necessary  for  this  laboratory 
103 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

work.  Is  the  number  of  vibrations  of  the  C 
pitch-pipe  or  the  laws  of  falling  bodies  more 
important  than  the  habitual  use  of  good  English? 
Probably  the  most  important  practical  consider- 
ation for  securing  better  conditions  for  teaching 
English  is  to  prove  to  superintendents,  princi- 
pals, and  school  boards  that  Enghsh  composition 
is  a  laboratory  subject,  and  that  it  requires  addi- 
tional help  as  much  as  does  science. 

As  soon  as  the  problem  nature  of  composition 
is  recognized  by  a  pupil  his  point  of  view  is 
changed.  He  discovers  that  composition  is  not 
guesswork,  but  telling  the  truth;  he  learns  the 
use  of  the  principles  of  his  textbooks  and  of  the 
suggestions  of  the  teacher.  He  and  his  teacher 
gain  a  personal  touch  and  fellowship  that  are 
mutually  valuable.  He  begins  to  realize  two 
things:  first,  that  revision  of  written  work  is 
possible  and  interesting;  second,  that  it  is  im- 
perative. Young  people,  and  sometimes  older 
ones,  have  an  impression  that  writing  comes  by 
the  grace  of  God  —  a  man  writes  well  by  gift, 
just  as  he  has  blue  eyes  or  six  feet  of  length.  You 
may  tell  about  the  laborious  studies  of  Stevenson 
or  the  endless  blotting  of  Tennyson's  lines,  and 
the  boy  pays  the  tribute  of  a  passing  wonder  — 
no  more.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  he  sits  with  his 
104 


HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  COLLEGE 

teacher  and  together  they  struggle  over  a  con- 
trary sentence  that  must  be  made  to  say  the 
thing  he  set  out  to  make  it  say,  he  gets  an  illu- 
mination. Under  this  method  the  careless  pupil 
realizes  the  keen  satisfaction  that  comes  from  a 
conquered  difficulty.  A  something  that  may  be 
called  the  workman's  conscience  stirs  within  him 
and  stands  a  fair  chance  of  growth.  Such  a  boy 
or  girl  will  be  far  more  likely  to  meet  the  demands 
of  the  business  man's  test  than  the  student  who 
has  passively  lamented  the  inadequacy  of  his 
returned  paper  on  Milton's  minor  poems.  Inci- 
dentally, a  pupil  is  in  the  way  to  develop  some 
appreciation  of  that  elusive  and  indefinable 
essence  that  we  call  style,  for  now  he  sees  the 
value  of  word  and  phrase  in  the  simple  exercise 
which  reflects  his  own  thought. 

A  frank  recognition  of  our  fundamental  aim  in 
teaching  literature  will  revolutionize  our  meth- 
ods. In  the  first  place,  our  choice  of  books  will  be 
determined,  not  on  the  basis  of  a  complete  survey 
of  the  field  of  literature,  but  by  the  tastes  and 
abilities  of  the  boys  and  girls  at  the  given  stage 
of  their  progress.  With  this  aim  always  in  view, 
it  will  be  recognized  that  it  is  of  no  particular 
value  for  pupils  to  know  the  stories  of  Shylock, 
Macbeth,  Cassar,  King  Arthur,  and  Ivanhoe. 

105 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

Neither  have  the  classifications  of  lyric  and 
ballad,  iambus  and  trochee,  romance  and  realism, 
nor  knowledge  of  Shakespeare's  dark  lady,  nor 
Milton's  marital  misfortimes,  nor  Scott's  lame 
leg,  nor  Pope's  crooked  spine  any  saving  quali- 
ties. Has  the  literature  of  the  school  become  a 
savor  of  hfe  unto  life,  a  nourisher  of  the  spirit, 
an  inspirer  of  nobler  ideas  and  emotions?  Unless 
we  caji  reach  the  essential  life  at  a  deeper  level 
than  a  mere  show-window  display  of  literary 
tinsel,  we  had  better  spend  our  time  with  the 
new  social  science  and  the  new  social  interpreta- 
tion of  history  and  of  physical  science  that  are 
destined  to  play  so  large  a  part  in  the  education 
of  the  next  decade.  By  recognizing  our  aim  in 
our  daily  practice,  we  shall  conform  to  the  doc- 
trine that  education  is  the  process  of  developing 
the  child  from  what  he  is  to  what  he  ought  to  be, 
rather  than  to  our  present  college-dictated  cus- 
tom of  leading  him  from  where  he  is  not  to  where 
he  does  not  want  to  go. 

On  this  new  principle  our  choice  of  literature 
will  be  much  broader  than  might  be  supposed, 
because  our  method  will  be  so  changed  that 
much  that  has  seemed  impossible  will  be  found 
most  interesting.  For  example,  the  pupils  of  the 
future  will  read  Scott  much  as  we,  who  were  not 
io6 


fflGH  SCHOOL  AND  COLLEGE 

taught  the  English  classics,  read  him.  The  teacher 
will  hasten  over  the  first  thirty  to  sixty  pages, 
get  the  class  fairly  absorbed  in  the  story,  and 
then — get  out  of  the  way.  She  will  not  assign  "the 
next  chapter";  she  certainly  will  not  take  the 
time  of  twenty-five  recitations  to  drag  under  her 
pedantic  arc  light  every  rainbow  tint  of  the  story 
by  the  "what  next?"  method;  she  will  not  exact 
themes  on  Rebecca's  lacerated  affections  or  Friar 
Tuck's  bibulous  homilies.  She  will  give  Scott  a 
chance,  and  incidentally  her  pupils  will  read  about 
five  times  as  much  and  like  it  more  than  five 
times  as  well.  By  thus  directing  the  tastes  the 
right  way,  the  reading  mania,  which  seems  to  be  a 
pretty  general  phenomenon  of  adolescence,  may 
be  made  to  contribute  to  the  literary  culture  and 
.  to  the  intellectual  resourcefulness  of  later  years. 
When  the  attitude  of  the  class  toward  the 
school  literature  is  thus  revolutionized,  the 
teacher  can  approach  more  difficult  books  with 
assurance.  Literature  of  varied  types  can  be  dis- 
covered to  the  class.  More  and  more  of  the 
technical  difficulties  will  be  solved  because  of  the 
intelligent  curiosity  of  the  pupils.  Thus  a  four 
years'  course  will  eventuate  not  only  in  a  greater 
knowledge,  but  also  in  a  discriminating  taste  that 
will  be  rich  in  its  promise  of  literary  culture. 
107 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

The  college,  then,  is  doing  the  high  school 
great  injury  by  insisting  upon  only  certain  tradi- 
tional subjects  for  entrance.  The  great  injustice 
is  done  to  the  vast  majority  who  do  not  go  to 
college,  but  whose  opportunities  for  preparation 
for  larger  Hving  are  limited  in  a  subtle  way  by 
the  dominance  of  coUege  traditions  in  the  high 
school.  The  college  injures  the  high  school,  also, 
by  prescribing  through  its  examinations  the 
method  and  scope  of  treatment  of  the  various 
studies.  Almost  any  subject  can  contribute  to 
real  culture  if  studied  in  the  right  way,  but  the 
prescriptions  of  college  professors,  far  removed 
in  experience  and  sympathy  from  the  mass  of 
Americans,  cause  a  stultification  of  both  teachers 
and  pupils. 

When  the  coUege  grants  to  the  high  school  the 
right  to  make  its  own  course  of  study,  when  it 
recognizes  for  entrance  any  subject  well  taught, 
when  it  admits  that  the  welfare  of  the  boys  and 
girls  is  more  important  than  special  preparation 
for  its  advanced  courses,  when  it  places  the  needs 
of  the  ninety-five  whom  it  never  reaches  above 
the  crotchets  of  the  professor  who  wants  to  make 
specialists  of  the  five,  then  it  will  enable  the  high 
school  to  fulfill  its  mission  of  equal  opportimity 
toaU. 


THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF  THE  COURSE  OF 
STUDY 

Perhaps  the  most  important  element  in  the  real 
service  that  any  educational  institution  renders 
to  its  patrons  is  the  spirit  of  its  administration. 
This  spirit  will  be  determined  by  the  fimdamental 
principles  of  those  in  authority,  colored,  of 
course,  by  the  personal  equation  that  has  so 
large  an  influence  upon  all  human  affairs.  The 
school  administrator  will  decide  the  nimierous 
questions  that  arise  in  the  day's  work  very 
largely  according  to  his  idea  —  perhaps  mostly 
subconscious  —  as  to  the  nature  and  ends  of 
education.  If  he  beUeves  that  the  aim  of  the 
schools  is  to  increase  the  sum  total  of  knowledge 
of  certain  traditional  subjects,  he  will  guide  his 
students  along  lines  in  harmony  with  that  behef . 
By  so  doing  he  will  avoid  the  inconvenience  of 
being  classed  as  a  disturber  of  the  educational 
peace  —  or  slumber  —  and  will  share  all  the 
emolmnents  that  accrue,  in  education  as  in 
politics,  to  those  who  are  religiously  "regular." 
109 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

One  of  the  most  important  questions  in  the 
formulation  of  a  program  of  studies  is,  What 
studies  shall  be  required  of  all  pupils?  The  answer 
given  in  the  course  of  study  of  the  American  high 
school  up  to  to-day  is  based  on  the  aforemen- 
tioned principle  that  it  is  the  aim  of  the  school 
to  increase  the  sum  total  of  knowledge  of  certain 
traditional  subjects.  Therefore,  practically  every 
pupil,  on  entering  an  American  high  school,  is 
compelled  to  take  algebra  and  a  foreign  language. 
In  a  considerable  percentage  of  the  schools  enter- 
ing pupils  are  compelled  to  add  to  these  two 
subjects,  ancient  history.  Every  principal  knows 
that  the  high  percentage  of  failures  comes  in 
these  subjects,  just  as  he  knows  that  the  over- 
whelming majority  of  first-year  pupils  have 
absolutely  no  appreciative  basis  for  any  of  them. 
He  knows  that  discouragement  with  these  sub- 
jects is  largely  responsible  for  the  tremendous 
losses  that  account  for  the  presence  of  forty-one 
per  cent  of  the  high  school  pupils  of  the  coun- 
try in  the  first  year,  but  if  he  believes  that 
these  subjects  are  the  essentials  of  intellectual 
salvation,  of  course  he  is  justified  in  requiring 
them. 

Even  a  superficial  consideration  of  the  reason 
why  the  American  people  all  over  the  country 
no 


THE  COURSE  OF  STUDY 

are  erecting  high  schools  that  are  ahnost  palatial, 
and  spending  millions  of  dollars  every  year  for 
their  maintenance,  will  discover  as  a  justification 
for  this  expense  a  fundamental  aim  vastly  differ- 
ent from  the  increase  of  the  net  total  of  algebra, 
Latin,  et  al. 

Of  course  it  is  perfectly  trite  and  obvious  that 
the  real  justification  for  the  public  expense  upon 
the  high  schools  is  the  production  of  an  improved 
citizenship.  A  corollary  to  this  statement  is  that 
those  subjects  that  will  contribute  to  citizenship 
should  be  the  ones  required  in  the  course.  If  we 
are  to  serve  the  cause  of  citizenship,  the  first- 
year  high  school  pupil  should  be  required  to  study 
concrete  problems  of  citizenship.  When  the  gram- 
mar school  course  shall  have  been  revised  to  har- 
monize with  the  same  principle,  the  high  school 
freshman  will  have  an  adequate  basis  for  more 
advanced  work,  but,  for  the  present,  some  such 
book  as  Beard's  American  Citizenship,  or  Guit- 
teau's  Training  for  Citizenship,  with  ample  illus- 
tration and  laboratory  practice  in  the  immediate 
community,  could  serve  as  a  basis. 

The  study  of  the  social,  economic,  and  politi- 
cal problems  of  to-day,  illustrated  and  illumined 
by  the  new  type  of  history  study  as  suggested 
in  a  previous  chapter,  should  be  one  of  the  major 
III 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

requirements  for  the  entire  course  in  every  high 
school.  To  this  civic  study  should  be  added  two 
other  inevitable  units.  Practically  everybody 
agrees  that  the  study  of  the  mother  tongue  should 
be  one  of  the  required  constants  of  the  course  of 
study,  and  nearly  everybody  agrees  that  the  aim 
of  this  course  should  be  practical  efficiency  in  the 
use  of  English  in  written  and  spoken  form, 
together  with  an  appreciative  acquaintance  with 
as  much  of  the  best  literature  as  can  be  covered. 
The  increasing  understanding  of  the  importance 
of  a  good  physical  basis  for  a  life  of  happiness 
and  of  efficient  service  will  probably  insist  upon 
a  larger  and  larger  place  for  the  right  kind  of 
physical  instruction  for  all  of  the  pupils.  These 
three  constants,  civics  and  the  other  social  sci- 
ences, English,  and  physical  training,  would  oc- 
cupy from  a  third  to  a  half  of  the  available  time 
throughout  the  high  school  course. 

To  this  should  be  added  as  a  requirement  for 
every  girl  systematic  instruction  in  those  home 
arts,  efficiency  in  which  will  largely  determine  her 
happiness  and  service.  Woman's  knowledge  of 
such  matters  as  these  is  of  vital  public  concern, 
and  the  public  has  the  same  right  to  conserve 
its  own  interests  by  requiring  this  instruction  in 
the  schools  it  is  supporting  as  the  private  business 

112 


THE  COURSE  OF  STUDY 

man  has  to  profit  in  the  advancement  of  his 
business.  With  the  addition  of  this  imit,  some- 
what over  half  of  the  time  of  the  girl  would  be 
taken  up  with  required  work,  only  one  element 
of  which  —  English  —  is  at  present  accepted  by 
the  majority  of  the  colleges.  There  can  be  no 
doubt,  however,  that  the  men's  colleges  and  the 
coeducational  colleges  will  coordinate  with  the 
public  schools;  and  unless  there  is  a  readjust- 
ment to  modem  problems  and  conditions  on  the 
part  of  the  majority  of  the  women's  colleges, 
inability  to  send  pupils  from  the  high  schools  to 
some  of  these  institutions  will  be  a  real  benefit  to 
the  schools  and  the  communities. 

Some  form  of  manual  training  should  be  re- 
quired from  every  boy  for  at  least  one  year  of  the 
course.  All  civilization  rests  upon  an  economic 
basis,  and  the  world's  work  must  continue  to 
demand  an  overwhelming  preponderance  of 
manual  over  purely  intellectual  work.  The  need 
of  our  day  is  intelligent,  conscientious  artisans, 
men  whose  coordinated  mental  and  physical 
powers  fit  them  to  render  services  that  ingenuity 
has  not  relegated  to  the  machine.  The  decadence 
of  our  agriculture  and  the  inefficiency  of  our 
artisanship  are  striking  evidences,  at  once  of  the 
need  of  a  manual  requirement  in  our  high  schools 

113 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

and  of  the  shortcomings  of  their  present  book- 
parroting  course  of  study. 

It  is,  of  course,  evident  that  the  smaller  school 
cannot  offer  as  wide  a  range  of  electives  as  might 
be  desired.  Public  welfare  indicates  the  neces- 
sity of  the  fimdamentals  of  civic  and  social 
science,  physical  training,  the  mother  tongue, 
home  training  for  the  girls,  and  manual  training 
for  the  boys.  Desirable  as  it  is  that  the  widest 
possible  opf>ortunity  may  be  offered  in  the  form 
of  electives  above  this  required  content,  it  is  even 
more  important  that  the  subjects  offered  should 
be  well  taught,  in  imits  sufficiently  large  to  be  of 
real  value.  The  temptation  to  introduce  many 
subjects  in  units  of  one,  two,  or  three  periods  a 
week,  rather  than  to  give  thorough  courses  of 
four  or  five  periods  extending  throughout  the 
year,  has  enabled  many  schools  to  present  a  for- 
midable array  of  subjects  in  their  course  of  study. 
Pupils  from  these  schools  often  show  a  startling 
fadlity  in  generalizing  on  facts  and  principles 
"that  aren't  so."  The  courses  of  study  and  the 
recommendations  of  the  best  pedagogical  author- 
ity, such  as  the  national  committees  and  the 
Carnegie  Foundation,  show  a  decided  tendency 
to  limit  the  course  either  to  four  units  of  five 
periods  per  week  each,  or  to  five  units  of  four 
114 


THE  COURSE  OF  STUDY 

periods  each.  In  addition  to  this  prescription,  pu- 
pils frequently  take  drawing,  physical  training, 
and  music,  each  for  one  or  two  periods  per  week. 

If  the  school  can  offer  only  one  group  of  studies, 
it  should,  of  course,  make  such  selection  as  seems 
most  likely  to  meet  the  needs  of  the  largest  pos- 
sible nimiber  of  pupils.  Here  will  come  the  pres- 
sure for  a  college  preparatory  course  for  a  very 
small  number  of  pupils,  with  the  consequent 
refusal  to  meet  the  needs  of  the  much  larger 
group  whose  education  must  end  in  the  high 
school.  Here  an  awakened  public  sentiment  must 
assert  itself,  and  to  this  end  the  present  wide- 
spread interest  in  all  sorts  of  commimity  prob- 
lems and  the  tendency  to  question  practices  sup- 
ported only  by  tradition  are  most  promising. 
Where  the  alternative  of  catering  to  the  larger  or 
to  the  smaller  group  can  be  clearly  presented, 
the  rights  of  the  majority  are  pretty  likely  to 
prevail  in  an  American  conmiunity.  Where  there 
are  insistent  demands  for  two  or  more  types 
of  training,  the  probable  result  will  be  the  desir- 
able compromise  of  increased  facilities  at  pubh'c 
expense. 

To  these  elements  of  social  science,  English, 
physical  education,  and  manual  arts,  there  should, 
of  course,  be  added  some  introduction  to  the 

"5 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

various  other  fields  of  human  knowledge.  It 
should  always  be  remembered  that  it  is  the  aim 
of  the  high  school  to  open  to  youth  the  various 
fields  of  knowledge,  to  arouse  dormant  interests, 
to  assist  in  the  trying-out  process  by  which  the 
individual  finds  his  way  to  his  particular  voca- 
tion and  to  his  avocations.  This  is  an  individual 
process.  The  adolescent  years  are  characterized 
by  imusual  emphasis  upon  individual  tendencies, 
by  shifting  from  one  interest  to  another,  a  ten- 
dency evidently  calculated  to  help  the  individual 
to  find  his  place  in  the  world  and  his  social  rela- 
tion to  his  kind. 

Study  of  the  various  subjects  along  the  lines 
of  their  human  interest,  rather  than  along  the 
familiar  lines  of  logical  acquisition  of  subject- 
matter,  will  revolutionize  the  attitude  of  tens  of 
thousands  of  pupils  toward  the  studies  and  the 
school.  This  revolutionizing  process  has  already 
made  much  progress  in  many  schools.  Whatever 
is  done,  no  pupil  should  be  driven  out  of  school 
because  of  inability  to  accomplish  any  one 
line  of  work.  The  ideal  of  the  course  should  be, 
thorough  work  along  various  lines  selected  with 
a  view  to  the  tastes  and  abilities  of  individual 
students. 

It  is  the  business  of  the  school  to  study  the 
ii6 


THE  COURSE  OF  STUDY 

pupils,  to  insist  that  choice  of  subjects  shall  not 
depend  upon  momentary  caprice,  to  prevent  a 
discursiveness  that  would  be  fatal  to  habits  of 
concentration,  to  develop  a  keen  interest  in  the 
work  of  the  school,  and  to  enforce  a  fair,  honest 
effort.  In  his  book.  The  American  Secondary 
School  and  Some  of  its  Problems,  Professor  Julius 
Sachs  says:  "We  are  all  agreed  that  the  entire 
range  of  studies  embraced  in  the  secondary 
school  curriculum  cannot  be  compassed  in  their 
respective  maximiun  of  offerings  by  one  and  the 
same  pupil;  choice  must  be  made,  but  it  must  be 
choice  imder  wise  ftnd  £J3 A,  direction,  dictated 
by  professional  knawledge.and.e^erience,  not 
by  parental  whim  or  bjr  the  dictates  of  chaotic^ 
poijdjfi^  sentii^eiit,^  least  ol  all-  by  \i^^  tno,Q4^  -Q^  ) 
the  immature  pupil."  /  ' 

Just  what  the  program  of  studies  shall  be  in 
addition  to  the  above-mentioned  constants  for  , 
all  pupils  ought  to  depend  largely  upon  the  local- 
ity, and  the  types  of  students  and  upon  the  fam- 
ines they  represent.  So  long  as  no  subjects  are 
made  fetishes,  and  no  subjects,  useful  and  valu- 
able to  a  considerable  proportion  of  the  pupils, 
are  excluded,  a  wholesome  variety  in  various 
schools  will  contribute  to  healthful  progress 
through  experimentation. 
117 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

The  method  of  promotion  is  another  problem 
of  the  utmost  importance  in  high  school  admin- 
istration. Fortunately  this  problem  is  much 
nearer  settlement  than  that  of  the  curriculum. 
Only  a  few  cities  still  adhere  to  the  inflexible  and 
antiquated  method  of  promotion  by  grades.  Any 
consideration  of  the  rights  and  needs  of  varying 
individuals  of  course  indicates  promotion  by 
subjects  as  the  only  sane  method.  The  few 
schools  that  have  not  adopted  this  method  of 
promotion  have  been  deterred  from  doing  so 
usually  by  adherence  to  the  classic  tradition  that 
what  was,  goftd.  ^nougi;  for  our  fathers  is  good 
enough  for  us,  or  by  iieedless  fear  of  the  compli- 

.  cations  of  an  untried  system,  of  organization. 

. ,  .Ih^re  are.  overwhelming  objectjODs  ,to  promo- 
tion by  grades.  Perhaps  the  most  ofevious'is  that 
pupils  are  compelled  to  repeat  subjects  they  have 
passed  for  the  sake  of  other  subjects  in  which 
they  have  failed.  For  example,  a  pupil  taking  the 
usual  first-term  course,  consisting  of  English, 
science,  history,  algebra,  and  a  foreign  language, 
fails  in  the  foreign  language  and  algebra.  The 
term  is  entirely  lost  so  far  as  progress  in  the  school 
is  concerned,  because  all  the  work  must  be  re- 
peated so  as  to  cover  the  two  subjects  failed  in. 
Sometimes  the  rules  permit  a  pupil  failing  in  only 
ii8 


THE  COURSE  OF  STUDY 

one  subject  to  go  ahead  with  his  class  and  carry 
the  failed  subject  as  a  condition.  This  is  nearly 
as  disastrous  as  the  other  dilemma,  for  a  contin- 
uous subject  inevitably  requires  mastery  of  the 
fundamental  principles  as  a  foundation  for  the 
more  advanced  work.  This  expedient  results 
only  in  the  pupil's  dragging  an  ever-lengthening 
chain  of  failure  which  ultimately  requires  the 
extra  term  or  perhaps  more  frequently  sends  him 
disheartened  from  the  school. 

Many  curious  complications  arise  under  this 
system  that  would  be  amusing  if  they  were  not 
so  tragic.  A  grammar  school  boy  had  passed  in 
every  subject  for  admission  to  high  school  save 
"reading."  For  "reading"  he  received  a  mark  of 
45  per  cent.  The  boy  stuttered  under  excitement. 
He  stuttered  at  the  unnatural  test  of  reading  a 
paragraph  before  strangers  in  a  strange  school. 
As  50  per  cent  was  essential  in  "reading,"  the 
45  per  cent  kept  the  boy  out  of  the  high  school. 
He  was  too  much  discouraged  to  spend  another 
year  doing  geography,  history,  spelling,  gram- 
mar, music,  physiology,  mensuration,  percent- 
age, and  denominate  numbers,  all  of  which  he 
had  at  his  fingers'  ends.  Besides,  he  was  not  sure 
at  all  that  a  repetition  of  these  studies  would 
cure  his  occasional  tendency  to  stutter. 
119 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

B was  a  student  in  a  school  that 


perhaps  more  than  any  other  in  the  country 
prides  itself  on  its  traditions.  A  teacher  of  Eng- 
lish was  amazed  by  the  perfection  of  the  boy's 
knowledge  of  every  detail  of  his  work.  His  com- 
positions were  so  good  that  the  teacher  envied 
his  skill.  He  had  never  failed  in  English,  but 
evidently  was  going  on  the  principle,  —  if  at 
first  you  do  succeed,  try,  try  again.  Investiga- 
tion showed  that  in  his  first  trial  he  had  failed 
seven  hours'  work,  the  second  time  over  his 
freshman  course  he  had  passed  the  work  failed 
at  first,  but,  because  of  the  tediousness  of  mark- 
ing time  over  ground  once  traversed,  had  failed 
seven  hours  that  he  had  passed  the  first  time. 
So,  because  he  had  failed  to  make  all  his  hits  at 
one  inning,  he  was  compelled  to  spend  a  third 
year  in  the  freshman  class.  At  seventeen  he  was 
classified  with  boys  of  thirteen  and  fourteen.  Of 
course,  he  was  tired  of  the  "same  old  stuff,"  as 
he  expressed  it,  so  he  found  a  job.  The  records 
of  many  schools  would  show  hundreds  of  dis- 
gusting parallels  to  these  cases.  They  are  striking 
examples  of  the  letter  of  the  law  that  killeth. 

Another  evil  of  this  system,  quite  as  great 
though  not  so  apparent,  is  the  inevitable  rigid- 
ity of  the  course.    The  school  may  offer,  for 

120 


THE  COURSE  OF  STUDY 

example,  four  courses  of  study.  Pupils  are 
grouped  in  sections  by  grades  in  each  term  of  the 
course.  It  becomes  nearly  impossible  to  permit 
any  combinations  from  the  various  courses  or  to 
make  the  load  lighter  or  heavier  to  meet  individ- 
ual needs  and  capacities.  The  thirty-five  pupils 
of  a  section  must  lock-step  together  from  the 
first  day  of  the  term  to  the  end  thereof,  and  the 
pedagogic  beadle  must  chastise  any  obstreperous 
youngster  who  cries  for  more  or  less  or  different. 

Promotion  by  subject,  of  course,  requires  a 
more  complicated  organization.  It  occasionally 
—  though  seldom  —  makes  it  impossible  to  give 
a  pupil  at  a  certain  time  just  the  subjects  that 
seem  most  desirable.  It  sets  a  difficult  problem 
in  permutations  to  be  worked  out  by  the  princi- 
pal and  teachers,  but  the  very  task  of  working 
out  this  problem  is  sure  to  bring  them  into  inti- 
mate and  vital  contact  with  the  boys  and  girls 
and  their  real  needs.  Moreover,  it  can  be  done, 
as  is  proved  by  thousands  of  schools  all  over  the 
country;  and  any  principal  who  really  wants  to 
serve  his  community  will  have  little  difficulty 
in  readjusting  his  administration  on  the  more 
democratic  basis. 

Problems  of  adjusting  the  course  of  study  will 
arise  in  very  great  variety  in  any  high  school. 

121 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

TJie  importance  of  a  liberal  spirit  in  their  admin- 
i^ration  may  be  emphasized  by  a  few  illustra- 
tions from  actual  experience. 

Mary  X was  a  bright  pupil  in  the  majority 

of  her  subjects,  but  like  many  other  bright  girls 
she  foimd  geometry  an  insurmountable  barrier. 
She  studied  honestly  and  diligently,  her  teachers 
patiently  go-carted  her  from  "two  right  lines"  to 
Q.E.D.,  but  Mary  was  more  dense  than  the  old 
German  who  tried  to  understand  the  use  of 
clearing-house  certificates  in  time  of  a  panic. 
After  repeated  explanations  and  vain  repetitions, 
a  light  dawned  upon  his  broad  face  and  he 
exclaimed,  "It  is  like  dis,  ven  mine  baby  vakes 
up  in  der  night  und  gries  for  milk,  I  shust  gif 
him  a  milk  dicket." 

Problem  i:  Shall  this  girl  be  tortured  with 
geometry  as  long  as  she  remains  in  school  (which 
under  these  conditions  probably  will  not  be 
long),  or  shall  she  be  permitted  to  drop  geometry 
and  make  up  her  counts  for  graduation  by  taking 
subjects  she  can  master  with  profit? 

John  Y failed  in  first-term  Latin  for  five 

successive  terms.  In  this  time  the  habit  of  failure 
came  to  include  nearly  all  of  his  studies  and 
became  chronic,  along  with  the  cigarette  habit, 
the  hands-in-the-pockets  habit,  the  stand-on- 

122 


THE  COURSE  OF  STUDY 

the-comer  habit,  and  several  other  highly  unde- 
sirable habits.  Every  one  knew  that  John  had 
plenty  of  ability  to  conquer  Latin  or  any  other 
subject  that  he  really  wanted  to  conquer. 

Problem  2 :  Did  the  school  do  right  in  keeping 
John  at  subjects  that  he  refused  to  study,  or 
should  it  have  sought  his  interests,  and  at  least 
have  tried  to  develop  the  habit  of  success?  See 
Johann  Friedrich  Herbart. 

Nellie  Z possessed  some  talent  and  much 

love  for  music.  It  was  accepted  as  a  matter  of 
fact  in  her  home  that  she  should  have  a  thorough 
musical  education.  She  took  two  lessons  a  week 
and  practiced  three  hours  a  day. 

Problem  3 :  Should  the  public  high  school  per- 
mit her  to  take  less  than  the  full  course  and  so 
be  graduated  in  five  or  six  instead  of  in  four 
years? 

Problem  4:  Should  the  public  high  school  ex- 
cuse Nellie  an  hour  before  the  close  of  school  on 
Thursday  to  attend  a  class  in  the  theory  of 
music,  which  she  could  attend  only  at  that  time? 

Harry  W was  the  son  of  a  prominent 

physician  who  had  determined  that  the  boy 
should  follow  his  father's  practice.  Harry  was 
obedient  and  dutiful,  prepared  his  lessons  in  the 
college  preparatory  course  passably  well,  and 
123 


DEMOCRACY'S  HIGH  SCHOOL 

spent  every  spare  moment  working  with  machin- 
ery. His  skill  and  ingenuity  in  all  kinds  of 
mechanical  processes  amounted  almost  to  genius. 
His  hatred  for  languages  and  for  textbook  theory 
was  overcome  only  by  the  coercion  of  a  strong 
father  who  had  managed  to  keep  in  touch  with 
the  boy. 

Problem  5:  (a)  Should  the  school  have  tried 
to  convince  the  father  that  Harry's  greatest  use- 
fulness lay  along  mechanical  lines?  (b)  If  suc- 
cessful, should  the  school  have  changed  Harry's 
course  so  as  to  emphasize  mechanics,  manual 
training,  and  mathematics? 

Problem  6:  If  William  A and  Mary  B 

will  not  or  cannot  do  any  certain  kind  of  school 
work,  shall  they  be  held  to  the  traditional  course, 
or  shall  their  needs  be  studied,  and  the  course 
adapted  to  meet  those  needs? 

Problem  7 :  Shall  the  high  school  put  all  fresh- 
men through  a  perscribed  course,  or  shall  it  so 
coordinate  with  the  grammar  school  as  to  profit 
by  the  latter's  knowledge  of  the  individual,  and 
shape  the  pupil's  course  in  accord  with  this  knowl- 
edge from  the  time  he  enters  the  high  school? 

Problems  like  the  above  with  a  thousand  indi- 
vidual variations  will  arise  from  day  to  day  in 
the  administration  of  a  high  school.  The  manner 
124 


THE  COURSE  OF  STUDY 

of  their  solution  will  depend  upon  the  conscious 
or  subconscious  belief  of  the  high-school  principal 
and  teachers  as  to  the  nature  and  ends  of  educa- 
tion and  their  conception  of  the  obligations  of  the 
school  to  the  community  that  is  paying  the  bills. 


OUTLINE 

I.  A  SOCIAL  VIEW  OF  THE  HIGH  SCHOOL 

1.  The  increasing  dissatisfaction  with  the  high 

school I 

2.  Its  civic  inefficiency i 

3.  Its  pedagogical  shortcomings 2 

4.  The  high  school  as  a  cooperative  agency  for 
social  service 5 

5.  Its  two  chief  ways  of  training  in  right  social 
thinking 6 

a.  Through  the  curriculum 6 

(i)  The  use  of  present  day  social,  political, 

and  economic  knowledge 6 

(2)  The  study  of  history  from  the  modem 
social  point  of  view   10 

b.  Through  participation  in  the  management  of 

the  school  as  a  social  unit 13 

(i)  The  abolition  of  snobbish  societies  as  the 

wrong  kind  of  training 13 

(2)  School  discipline  as  a  daily  object  lesson 

in  social  cooperation 15 

(3)  The  spirit  of  democracy  in  the  organiza- 
tion of  student  activities 17 

6.  The  need  of  diversity  of  opportunity  in  studies      19 
a.  Our  education  is  through-scheduled  for  the 

professions 20 

127 


OUTLINE 

b.  It  should  be  less  exclusively  bookish  and 
academic 24 

c.  The  colleges  enforce  a  course  of  study  fitted 
only  for  the  few 25 

II.  THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  BOY 

1.  The  school's  responsibiUty  for  the  school  loafer.     28 

2.  There  is  no  real  antagonism  between  the  old 
education  and  the  new 29 

3.  The  respective  services  of  the  old  school  and  the 
new 30 

4.  The  changed  cUentage  of  the  high  school 30 

5.  Its  function  to  train  all  for  citizenship  rather  than 

a  few  for  leadership 31 

6.  Bridging  the  gap  between  the  grammar  and  the 
high  school 33 

7.  Holding  the  unintellectual  boy 37 

8.  Serving  those  who  must  soon  go  to  work 41 

9.  Equalizing  high  school  subjects 42 

III.  THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  GIRL 

1.  Girls  follow  a  curriculum  originally  made  for 
boys 51 

2.  What  society  and  the  girl  require  of  the  high 
school 51 

a.  Provision  for  physical  health 52 

b.  Education  for  efficient  home-making 60 

c.  Training  for  a  wage  earning  occupation 71 

128 


OUTLINE 

d.  Development  of  the  larger  interests  of  full  and 

complete  living 76 

3.  The  course  of  study  must  be  adaptable  to  indi- 
vidual needs 77 

4.  The  school  must  be  socially  democratic 77 

IV.  THE  HIGH  SCHOOL  AND  THE  COLLEGE 

I.  The  controversy  between  the  high  school  and  the 

college 80 

a.  The  incubus  of  college  domination 81 

3.  College-entrance  requirements  restrict  the  range 

of  the  high-school  course 82 

4.  They  limit  the  methods  of  teaching  employed. .  89 

5.  The  case  of  science 90 

6.  Mathematics ,.  ,^,. ,,..,. ..., .  , . ., 93 

7.  Languages ;.. ^.y:l\\. ,v, .•/; -V- 97 

8.  History .\".  .\'.\' .'. .'.'. ..'.'..'..' 98 

0.  English....^,.,.,....-.... ,..,.. ....-,0.,......*  ,ft8, 

10.  Irigh's  thei;,%iccille^  nijii^:  gra^t,to.'tlie  ^^/\  \  } 

school 10^ 


V.  THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF  THE  COURSE 
OF   STUDY 

1.  The  spirit  of  school  administration  as  an  expres- 
sion of  real  service 109 

a.  The  problem  of  required  studies' no 

a.  The  traditional  requirement  of  algebra  and 

foreign  languages no 

129 


OUTLINE 

'  b.  Social  science,  English  and  physical  training 
as  a  new  basis iii 

c.  Household  arts  as  an  additional  requirement 

for  girls 112 

d.  Manual  arts  as  an  additional  requirement  for 
boys 113 

3.  The  need  of  thorough  courses  of  four  or  five  hours 
per  week 114 

4.  The  problem  of  elective  studies 115 

5.  The  method  of  promoting  by  subjects 118 

6.  Some  special  problems  in  adapting  the  course  of 
study , 121 


"RIVERSIDE  EDUCATIONAL 
MONOGRAPHS 

GENERAL  EDUCATIONAL  THEORY 

Dbwkt'8  HOBAL  PEIMOIFLES  IN  EDUCATION JB 

Eliot's  EDUCATION  FOB  EFFICIENOT 8B 

Eliot's  OONCBETE  AND  FBACTICAL  IN  MODEBN  EDUCATION SB 

Emkbson's  education .SB 

FiSKE's  THE  MEANINQ  OF  INFANCY Mf 

Htdk's  THE  TEACHEB'8  FHILOSOPHT .SB 

Palmer's  THE  IDEAL  TEACHES M 

Palmer's  TBADE8  AND  PBOFESSIONS SB 

Frosseb's  THE  TEACHES  AND  OLD  AQE 60 

Tebman's  the  TEACHEB'S  HEALTH 60 

Tborndike's  INDIVIDUALITT SB 

ADMINISTRATION  AND  SUPERVISION  OF  SCHOOLS 

Bktts's  NEW  IDEALS  IN  BUBAL  SCHOOLS 60 

Bloomfield's  vocational  QUIDANCE  OF  YOUTH 60 

Cabot's  VOLUNTEEB  HELP  TO  THE  SCHOOLS 60 

Cole's  INDUSTRIAL  EDUCATION  IN  ELEHENTABT  SCHOOLS 86 

CUBBERLET'S  CHANOINQ  CONCEPTIONS  OF  EDUCATION SB 

Cdbbeelet's  the  IMPROVEMENT  OF  BUBAL  SCHOOLS SB 

Lewis's  DEMOCBACY'S  HIOH  SCHOOL 60 

Pebrt's  status  of  THE  TEACHES SB 

BxEDDEN's  THE  PBOBLEM  OF  VOCATIONAL  EDUOATIOH SB 

Trowbridge's  THE  HOME  SCHOOL 60 

WwtKS's  THE  PEOPLE'S  SCHOOL 60 

METHODS  OF  TEACHING 

Bailet's  AET  EDUCATION 60 

Bbtts's  the  RECITATION 60 

CAMPAOifAC's  THE  TEAOHINQ  OF  OOBfPOSITION Mf 

COOLET'S  LANOUAOE  TEACHINQ  IN  THE  0BADE8 JB 

Dewey's  INTEEEST  AND  EFFOBT  IN  EDUCATION .60 

Earhart's  TEACHINO  CHILDBEN  TO  STUDY 60 

EVAHS'S  THE  TEACHINO  OF  HIGH  SCHOOL  HATHEHATIC8 SB 

rAlBCHiLD's  THE  TEACHINB  OF  POETRY  IN  THE  HIOH  SCHOOL 60 

Freeman's  THE  TEACHING  OF  HANDWRITIN8 60 

Haliburton  awd  Smith's  TEACHINO  POETRY  IN  THE  OBADES 60 

Habtwkll's  THE  TEACHINO  OF  HISTOBY SB 

Hatnks's  economics  IN  THE  SECONDABY  SCHOOL 60 

Hill's  THE  TEACHINO  OF  CIVICS 60 

KlLPATRiCK's  THE  MONTESSORI  SYSTEM  EXABUNED SB 

Palmer's  ETHICAL  AND  HOBAL  INBTRUOTION  IN  THE  SCHOOLS..    M 

Palmer's  SELF-CULTIVATION  IN  ENGLISH SB 

SuzZALLO's  THE  TEACHINO  OF  PRIMARY  ABTCHMETIO 60 

SVMAUiO'sTHE  TEACHINO  OF  SPELUNS M 

1916 


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